Mérida City Council will build Sustainable Markets in support of local communities

The objective is to give local producers the opportunity to access better quality items and prices.

Mérida, Yucatán, (November 18, 2021).- The Mérida City Council will create more sustainable markets in various parts of the city in order to support local communities and citizens who will be able to buy fresh, natural products and at fair prices, reported José Luis Martínez Semerena, director of Economic Development and Tourism. 

In a special held by La Jornada Maya, Antonio Blanco Cebada, Food Security researcher at the Regional Observatory of Governance and Social Coordination in the face of Covid-19 (ORGA), explained the urgency of having more public markets in the city, especially in the face of the economic crisis that caused the Covid-19 pandemic, to guarantee food security. 

According to a mapping of the observatory, in the Yucatecan capital there are only 13 markets distributed mainly between the center and the east, and about 17 flea markets that operate mostly only on weekends; the best known and largest markets are Lucas de Gálvez and San Benito, located in Downtown Mérida, but these cannot supply the entire population. In addition, due to a health emergency, several stores have had to close and look for other alternatives.

According to the official, there is currently a fair price space in the Gonzalo Guerrero neighborhood, a Slow Food market where products from the Merida communities beneficiaries of the Círculo 47 program, participate. 

However, he assured that they will work to create other sustainable markets in the city, which will be called Fair Trade Markets, they will be places where the producers of the communities, or the artisan with the final buyer, are approached directly. “We avoid the intermediary that in the end takes a lot of the profit percentage and in this way, the benefit reaches the product family directly,” he stressed. 

Currently, he said that they are doing an analysis of the places and public spaces where these markets and the appropriate number could be placed; he estimated that as of May or June of the following year they could already be operating. 

He also said that in these markets, there will be a space for handicrafts and other items made by local producers and entrepreneurs from the Municipal Entrepreneurship Center to be offered. 

Source: La Jornada Maya

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