Paper short abstract:

This paper tells the story of a new and thriving Sunday market in a rural town of Northern Ecuador. The fair's history is short, turbulent, and successful, and, although played out in a southern setting, has much in common with farmers' markets born in the global north during the last decade.

Paper long abstract:

This paper tells the story of a new and thriving Sunday morning market in a rural town of Northern Highland Ecuador. The fair's history is short, turbulent, and successful, and, although played out in a southern setting, has much in common with farmers' markets born in the global north during the last decade. Cotacachi is a small town surrounded by a stunning patchwork of agricultural fields covering the slopes of dormant volcanoes. This region is not a mono-cultured desert dominated by supermarket provisioning; many families grow much of their own food, and it is more common to buy food through small stores and bustling markets. Still, people crowd to "la feria comunitaria", to purchase organic produce, harvested that very morning, for a fair price, directly from farmers. With this paper I would like to challenge conceptions of discrete development trajectories, and invite reflections on cross-fertilization of imagination and practice between different parts of the world.