Reclaiming traditional food systems in alternative food networks. Insights from Mexico city peri-urban agriculture

ABSTRACT

In the literature on how to make food systems just and sustainable, we often look at Alternative Food Networks (AFN) as a way forward. AFNs are initiatives that pose alternatives to conventional food systems (driven by productivism and harmful to human and environmental health). Despite this broad understanding of what AFNs can be, in practice, most cases presented in the literature look surprisingly alike. In this article, we challenge the scholars working on alternative food networks to look beyond the narrow definition of AFNs by considering cases of traditional agriculture and distribution systems. We illustrate this argument using the case of chinampas, a traditional agricultural system in Mexico City that contributes in different ways to local sustainability. Analysing semi-structured interviews conducted on site, we argue that chinampas can be defined as an alternative food network because of their modes of production, their diverse distribution channels, and their economic practices. We conclude that traditional food systems present an alternative to conventional food systems and should therefore be included in AFN research. Broadening the definition of AFNs so to include traditional and non-institutional practices can help identify diverse cases fitting this new lens, including in the Global North; it can also contribute to affirming the value of these traditional systems in building sustainable and just societies.

KEYWORDS:

• Food systems
• Mexico
• peri-urban agriculture
• chinampas
• lacustrine wetland

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Jesús Iván Díaz Morales for conducting the fieldwork, Luzorquídea Castro for transcribing the interviews, Fernando Abad for the graphic design of Figure 2, Anne Herndon for English editing, and Patricia Balvanera for logistical support. The authors thank four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments which helped strengthen the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Annex 1. Interview guide

Introductory questions

Is this land yours? Who else works on this land?

How long have you worked on the chinampa?

Do the sales from the chinampa represent your main source of income? If not, what other sources of income do you have?

About the chinampa

What mode of production do you use to grow your products (monoculture or polyculture? Milpa?)

What sort of fertilisers do you use? What sort of pesticides do you use?

Do you have a certification (for instance, certification of organic food)? If so, which one? If not, why not?

Production and commercialization

What is your name and age?

What is the size of the chinampa?

What do you produce in the chinampa? Please name all products.

How much of each of these products do you harvest each year?

Do you consume your own products? Which ones? How much of your production does this represent?

Do you give away or exchange products? Which ones? How much of your production does this represent?

How much of your production do you sell? Where do you sell it (where in the city, and in what type of shop)? Who sells it?

Do you form part of a growers’ cooperative where you can sell products?

Do you know in which area of the city your products are consumed?

Which is your favourite commercialisation channel and why? What are the major challenges associated with commercialisation?

What challenges have COVID brought specifically?

Do you always manage to sell all your production? What do you do with the products you cannot sell?

Annex 2. Codes used in the thematic analysis

• Production system

  • Species harvested

  • Agricultural practices

    • ▪ Traditional

    • ▪ Conventional

  • Fertiliser use

  • Pesticide use

• Distribution channels

  • Modes of commercialisation

    • ▪ Practices

    • ▪ Motivations

  • Non-monetised distribution

    • ▪ Practices

    • ▪ Motivations

• Economic practices

  • Labour

  • Transactions

  • Forms of financing

Notes

1 We recognise that the AFN literature has mostly focused on urban and peri-urban settings, and that this bias is also present in this research.

2 For instance, two recent special issues on urban food sharing (Davies and Evans 2019) and political gardening (Certomà and Tornaghi 2015) present empirical cases exclusively from Western Europe and the USA.

3 We acknowledge that the Global North/Global South divide can be problematic as it suggests a hierarchical binary between two regions of the world that does not reflect the existing heterogeneity within those regions (Murphy 2013). Yet, we believe this term is helpful in representing, at least in the case of the literature on AFNs, the disparities in terms of amount of research being produced, and types of AFNs, between Europe, North America and Australia on the one hand, and the rest of the world on the other.

4 However, assuming that local food is always better may be a mistake as local food is also fraught with social and environmental impacts (Sarmiento 2017).

5 Own calculation based on data from (FAO 2019; 2020).

6 Although some chinampas only grow one or two species, most grow six or more, and up to 29 in one chinampa. Species diversity does not appear to be related to plot size.

7 None of the interviewees hold an organic certification. When asked why, chinamperos state that they are unsure how to get it or that their production is too small and the certificate too costly. Use of the canal’s heavily polluted water to water the production is also perceived by interviewees as a barrier to getting a certification.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Programa de Apoyo a Proyectos de Investigación e Innovación Tecnológica PAPIIT IV200120) and the research project Colaboratory Kitchen (Cocina Colaboratorio).