Characterization of collective construction of costs and prices process in the platense Vegetable Belt’s.

Case study of bags of agroecological vegetables

Abstract

The following work describes and analyzes the experience of collective construction of costs and prices of an organization of agroecological horticultural producers in the district of La Plata, during the spring-summer season of 2019. In a general context in which it is not commonly they know the costs of production, the creation and development of short marketing circuits, they seek to build other logics and commercial strategies that generate greater bargaining power for the producing families and a better distribution of value in favor of them. As part of this, some organizations carry out workshops or days of debate and definition of prices of the varieties included in the bag based on their costs, determined by assembly.
This article studies the case of construction of costs and prices of varieties of the Pueblo a Pueblo bag, solidarity marketer of the Movement of Excluded Workers, rural branch, which brings together producers of platense Horticultural Belt ́s (CHP by its initials in Spanish). The research methodology was based on a qualitative strategy, which combined participant
observation with semi-structured interviews.
The research work allows to know the strengths and limitations of this kind of experiences. Among the first ones are the visualization of their own work and their productive practices, and of the variables considered for the determination of the costs and prices of the agroecological varieties marketed by the organization. On the other hand, among the limitations are the high militant effort and the need to simplify methods for updating or correcting estimates in an inflationary context.