Visibility of peri-urban agroecology during the pandemic: the use of social media for the militancy of the dish

Abstract

We intend to look into ways in which -from the global COVID-19 pandemic- agroecological products became virtually visible and the debate on food sovereignty increased in collective social concerns. In this sense, we start from the reality that virtual social networks are enhanced by information and communication technologies, linked to the traditional network gaze made up of entities and by relationships between these entities From the advent of the global world, the networks were revitalized by the web and acquired new social dynamics, took different forms and dimensions , as in virtual space they multiply (Kauchakje, Penna, Frey, Klaus and Duarte: 2006). In order to research the habits of pre-pandemic food consumption and the modifications made during it, we develop a survey whose results we present in this work, thus aiming to provide current data on the choices, access possibilities, knowledge, etc. about food and its origin. We appeal to the concepts of agroecology and pericity, considering the practices and the study space. The first refers to the “field of knowledge that gathers, synthesizes and applies knowledge of agronomy, ecology, sociology,
ethnobotany and other related sciences, with a holistic and systemicperspective, to generate, validate and apply appropriate strategies for the design, management and evaluation of sustainable agri-food systems’’ (Sarandón and Flores, 2020, p. 59). The second is defined as “border territory subjected to social and economic processes related to the capitalist valorization of space, as a result of the actual or potential incorporation of new lands into the city” (Feito and Barsky, 2020, p. 897). While we will look at various experiences, we will focus on the case of the “Pueblo a Pueblo” cooperative, a marketing initiative that proposes to be constituted as alternative consumption, distribute healthy food, at fair price and through decent work.