Fruit and vegetables for Mexican markets and supermarkets
Carolyn writes.
I wanted to find out more about your last paragraph about the mercados here in Mexico. I am currently studying abroad in Puebla Mexico and I’m an environmentalist so I wanted to know what exactly you meant by the fact that most of the food in mercados is from whole sale markets? So it’s the exact same food you’d find in a supermarket? I want to believe that the food in mercados is much more fresh than that in the supermarket, but is that true? What would be the best way to help these poor farmers? Also the closest market to me is in San Pedro Cholula Puebla. Thanks!
Carolyn, for decades Mexico has operated with a series of regional wholesale markets, roughly one to each state. (There is a widespread feeling that the system needs to be modernized in light of modern transport, marketing, and communications, I believe). Anyway, these, with their wholesalers specializing in mangoes or nopales or whatever, are fascinating to visit. You should ask someone to take you to the one in Puebla in the list I have linked to.
The supermarkets, as I understand it, buy largely from the huge wholesale market in Mexico City, the largest in the world. (Here’s a description of this Central de Abastos by my friend and food blogger, Lesley Tellez.) They also buy from regional wholesale markets and in addition have supply chains of their own.
How fresh the food in the mercados is compared to the supermarkets depends on turnover, I think. In Guanajuato, the supermarket re-stocked weekly on a Wednesday or Thursday, the vendors in the city markets went with their pick up trucks to Irapuato as necessary. And then there are the tianguises, the moveable weekly markets that also stock from the wholesale markets. And the restaurants, of course.
It is hard for the individual small farmer anywhere, not just in Mexico, to sell directly to the supermarkets as they need to purchase in bulk and to certain standards. Hence the middle men.
It is also ¡mportant to ask whether it is worth the farmer’s while spending all day at a market. It depends on the crop and on the society. My father, a grain and dairy farmer, did not find it so. Vegetable growers might find it so.
So far as I can tell direct farmer-consumer selling occurs largely either in very poor societies (which Mexico has not been for some time although obviously there are still some very poor people) or in very rich societies like the US.
How to help the Mexican small farmer? Well, there are lots of Mexican volunteer and government groups trying to do that. I would suggest you ask around for the groups in your area. They could really speed things up for you. And it’s worth remembering that not all the Puebla farmers are small or poor. Some are, some aren’t.
Caveat. This is not my main area of expertise and you should continue to investigate on your own. Good luck. And please keep in touch and let me know what happens.
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Let’s not forget that by buying in traditional markets, as opposed to supermarkets, one is helping a small entrepreneur make a living. There are some very intersting studies of the women who sell in markets. Florence Babb, an anthropologist, is one scholar who has published on women in Peru.
In Cochabamba, Bolivia, the market women were an important conduit for information in the protests against the sale of the municipal waterworks to Bechtel Corp. in 2000. Some of their children, now lawyers, defended those arrested in the protests.
Yes, indeed. There’s lots more to be said about markets and supermarkets.
Sometimes it’s just some wilted herbs and sometimes it’s big, glorious onions or nopales, but along the peripheries of many markets, I find indigenous farmers, often sitting on mats, selling their own goods. I’m always on the lookout for beans and normally you find everyone has the same thing. At first I thought this meant they were popular in the region but I now think they get them from the same source, hopefully somewhat local. But outside the centers of the markets are the women with their stacks of local beans and herbs and sometimes vegetables and this is always pretty exciting.
Absolutely agreed, Steve. And the smaller the town, the more likely you are to find these things.
In any tianguis in Mexico and near the market halls there are usually some direct sellers. At tianguis you will find some produce from smaller farmers that cannot sell in bulk, but who sell to intermediaries, particularly local o seasonal specialities. But yes, most of the merchants buy at the Central de Abasto (a fascinating place) in Mexico City and you can too. Puebla has one as well, as far as I know. You can also go to one of the organic markets that are growing in various places, though I think Puebla doesn’t have one yet (http://www.mercadosorganicos.org.mx/direcciones.html). People selling there are mostly producers themselves, or parts of networks. I go to the one in Chapingo regularly, I know several of the people that are involved in this organization, and it appears to work quite well.
For some pictures: http://www.cuexcomate.com/search/label/Mercados
Thanks for the information Heike and good to have you on my bl0g. I’ve a few more thanks I want to add to this so lter today will put your links where people are more likely to see them.
I think that the Pátzcuaro mercado stock must be refreshed on Wednesday, as we see certain specialty vegetables on Thursday that we don’t ordinarily.
One, maybe two stalls specialize in rarities such as daikon radish (nabo blanco)*, black radish, (nabo negro), eggplant, (berenjena), and occasionally, Brussels Sprouts (Bruselas)!
*I just scored all the nabo blancos they had in order to make spicy radish kimchi.
But most of the time, it’s the usual line up.
Impressionable occasional visitors tend to think that the Señoras seated on crates or upturned pails, with their verduras laid out on a tarp on the ground have grown the vegetables themselves. But a friend saw the wholesale jobber, the same one who sells the specialty vegs at his own stand, taking orders for produce from the señora.
Saludos,
Don Cuevas
There a whole mind set behind this, don’t you think? In the past farmers must have been small and must have sold directly. Mexico is an undeveloped country, ergo it’s markets must be like the farmer’s markets we are trying to create in the States-
Don, it is true that some of the small-scale vendors are resellers, but there are always some producers as well (and some of them bring some of their own stuff, and buy some more to resell). And some sell the stuff that producers sell to them directly. Also, the produce at the whole-sale market is not necessarily from large producers.
If you see something that looks like standard whole-sale market produce, that’s probably what it is. But what looks less standard – some of the more seasonal and regional native fruit, wild mushrooms, herbs, seeds in some regions, etc. are often from producers/colectors themselves or their families.
I know that, because some of my students have looked at that kind of thing – interviewed vendors, looked at the destiny of home-garden or small-scale production or of collected plants. Tianguis in rural areas especially are an important outlet for these products. Not that it is quantitatively that important, but quite a few people make a (partial) living from that.
Even the commercial system is more complicated than the simple buy-at-the-wholesale-market-and-distribute thing – there are regional and local networks for some products, for example, medicinal plants, that work quite outside of the “normal” system.
So: it’s complicated. The result is a tremendous variety of food products offered, in kind, quality and provenance. And as with most things in Mexico, the buyer has to be beware, and try to obtain information, which is usually forthcoming once a relationship has been established.
All the best,
Heike