Giovanni Manfroni 
Started in the USA over 20 years ago, this year for the first time, Farmers Markets Week goes global! The World Farmers Markets Coalition, representing tens of thousands of farmers markets and hundreds of thousands of farmers around the world, has decided to mobilize to celebrate the role that farmers’ markets are playing in developing a new production-based food system. , direct distribution and consumption of local food.
However, farmers markets do not exist by chance. This is also the time to underline the importance of the work that the organizers and managers of farmers markets do together with the farmers, as well as the many volunteers around the world, to bring in city the products of the countryside but also the culture and peasant traditions. Farmers markets represent a reality that is growing more and more, in Italy thanks to the work of the Campagna Amica Foundation and the 2 years of the COVID pandemic, over 60 new farmers markets have been inaugurated while the phenomenon is expanding from the far north of the globe to the extreme south. From Alaska to Chile, from Norway to New Zealand without neglecting the virtuous examples of many African countries, biodiverse, non-globalized spending finds more and more interest in citizens, in the world of quality catering and also among me, younger generations.
Parties, solidarity initiatives, community lunches and dinners, workshops, are taking place on all continents, a real one-week celebratory marathon that has the ambition to renew itself every year and involve more and more markets, farmers, consumers and local communities. “In every corner of the country, we will work to make our World farmers markets coalition grow more and more”, declared the president Richard McCarthy, “in just over a year of life we have done a lot of work and today there are many protagonists of local food from all over the world with whom we are confronted. However, we are well aware that there is a lot to do to build the largest community in the world of farmers and consumers who promote the production and consumption of local food”, concluded McCarthy.
In a few days the celebrations will end and new projects of the World Farmers Markets Coalition will start from September. “A World Academy will be opened to provide farmers markets managers, peasants, local and national administrators all the relevant information and guide lines on how to open and managed farmers market, informs Carmelo Troccoli, Coordinator of the coalition. Involving universities from different countries our goal is to promote, as soon as possible, a real master of local food policy to grow the necessary skills for the development of a true local food system.
Among the FAO food coalition projects, farmers markets will play an increasingly important role in the dynamics of building more sustainable and fair food systems.
