Creating urban markets for sustainable small farmers

These case studies happened between 2020 and 2023.

El Bonito Tianguis is a market for producers and local food products that began operations in 2011 with a process of curing products and producers. This curing process continues today in Tianguis’s modern practices. Tianguis organizes sales events with an average of 20 to 40 producers from different regions of the country per event (with an average event duration of 3 to 5 days). The events are thematic, and focus on direct sales by the producer. Since 2019, they have a fixed location where a selection of bulk products from the same producers are sold. Further, its founder has accomplished notable impact with his communication work, from representing commercial brands to being offered talks on sustainable trade.

The origin of Tianguis stems from its founder’s goal of strengthening sales opportunities for producers in the agro-productive areas that surround Mexico City, areas in which poverty and violence rates have been high in the last decade. As such, the primary goal was to offer more and better sales opportunities for agricultural products.

Pathway maps represent the sequence businesses followed to implement successful sustainability practices and identify emerging ones within firms. The pathways also reveal the diversity of actors that begin to form sustainability enabling ecosystems for businesses to adopt, deploy or test sustainability practices.