Organic Market in Oaxaca

“The fashion here on plant Earth will be for organic providers to come to meet with organic consumers”, said Clemente Cruz Sosa, leader of the initiative from the first day the organic garden was installed in the garden of El Pochote (Art Cinema on García Vigil).
A little more than a year later several community and producers organizations involved in the cultivation, production and processing of organic products continue to offer them every weekend from 10 AM to 5 PM.

The merchants sell products such as honey, spring water, goat cheese, fruit, vegetables, coffee, chingre (a cane beverage), dried mushrooms and fruit, mescal, shampoo, creams, soaps, ornamental plants, caramel, cakes, yogurt, and tejate. Artisans soon got in on the act and now offer textiles and pottery from many different communities of the State of Oaxaca.

The Oaxacan painter from Juchitan, Francisco Toledo, initiated the idea and through the Patronato Prodefensa del Patrimonio de Oaxaca, called on all those organic producers, many of them inadvertently and unknowingly, to receive a fair price for their products which because of the expense of cultivating organically cannot compete in the conventional market despite the obvious health benefits of food without agricultural chemicals, artificial flavorings or preservatives and the also obvious benefits to the ecosystem.

The small producers who plant local varieties face enormous disadvantages in comparison with large agribusinesses which uses chemicals, large farming machinery and consumes huge quantities of non-renewable energy resources that contaminate and heat the Earth.

The leader of the movement says that in the process of organization they have followed the “How it’s done by those who can do”, bringing together the knowledge necessary to promote development and place the products on the market.

It is necessary to prove that Oaxaca has power globally because of its biodiversity says Cruz Sosa and, he added, “There are many sane agricultural options and this is the opportunity to offer our exquisite products to the world”.

The initiative seeks to grow with future generations who seemed to feel that to work the fields was a mistake without a future, now this ecological vision plans to reconsider this premise to show that it can be a profitable venture. Such is the case, that together with this belief, around 60 producers, farmers, horticulturists, livestock, chicken breeders and bee keepers among others who work organically have gotten together.

Today these groups continue to invite the public to support and participate in this initiative that offers us organic products and a healthier lifestyle, because the chemicals used in the production of some foods are accumulate in our bodies and are difficult to eliminate, also their production damages the environment.