New emerging peasantry and local food: Participatory Guarantee Systems as a strategy to re-localise and re-socialise the organic food quality. A theoretical analysis

Resumo

Despite a farewell to peasants was predicted by modernisation theorists, nowadays we are witnessing a re-emergence of the peasant model; this new direction is today interpreted as a search of independence from the centrifugal thrust of the agro-industrial sector. This paper, with a theoretical approach and an analysis of the relevant bibliography, links the new emerging peasantry to the dynamics which are changing the organisation of the markets through, for instance, the construction of new food circuits or changes in consumers’ behaviour. These elements are framing agriculture in a process of transition in which the primary sector have to face new challenges. Considering that both industrial agriculture and peasant agriculture are trying to cope with new demands by reorganising themselves, this work presents the Participatory Guarantee Systems as a peasants’ tool to re-socialise quality within the organic markets and bring back food to a local dimension, moving it away from the processes of commodification.