AGRO-FOOD SYSTEMS IN THE AMAZON

HYBRID SPACE-TIMES AND INTERCONNECTIONS IN SHORT FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS IN MANAUS

Abstract

This paper analyzes Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) based on the asymmetric socio-spatial relationships between the city and the countryside in the Manaus region, Amazonas State, Brazil. It questions the notion that such networks emerge exclusively as autonomous initiatives of family farmers. In contrast, it hypothesizes that many of the innovations associated with SFSCs (technical, organizational, discursive, and communicational) are driven by demands, values, and forms of knowledge produced in urban settings, thereby configuring flows that emanate from the city toward the rural area. In this sense, the paper discusses how these dynamics produce hybrid space-times, characterized by the interweaving of rural and urban knowledge, practices, rationalities, values, territorialities, and temporalities, through which farmers reorganize their modes of production, commercialization, and communication. The analysis shows that although SFSCs may enhance farmers' visibility and strengthen local supply circuits, they also reproduce socio-spatial inequalities, selective access to food, and new forms of territorial subordination. By problematizing who determines the value of food, who accesses food considered healthy, and who benefits economically from these networks, the article contributes to a critical interpretation of SFSCs as social innovation, highlighting their limitations, contradictions, and implications for food sovereignty and regional development in the Amazon.