Ecological Connections: Reimagining the role of farmers' markets

Fears raised about future food security have increasingly politicised the food system, challenged traditional notions of an urban/rural divide and highlighted the growing disconnection between people and their food. In Canberra, the issue of food has spawned both national policy responses as well as new personal engagements most overtly expressed in a ‘turn to the local’ through growing one’s own food, purchasing it at farmers’ retail outlets and, perhaps most significantly, shopping at farmers’ markets. In all of these practices, we can glimpse new articulations of human/nature relationships grounded in notions of well-being. Through a focus on the farmers’ markets this research draws on analysis of ethnographic and organisational data to examine the multiple ways in which the staging of this food-based exchange can construct and facilitate more productive engagement with practices of ecological well-being which move beyond notions of caring for the environment. Through the Capital Region Farmers Market, we explore the potential for embodied engagement in the food system to actively (re)connect people to the communities, land and the environment which yields their food. In so doing, we investigate the potential of these sites to promote more ethical ecological understandings and practices