Hi dear everyone, my name is Rowens Cristancho, I live in Colombia, South America.
I’m biologist, and like all of you, I'm really concerned about the global food security. In this forum, I have seen opinions from many professors and PhDs; I´m sorry, I don´t have a lot of professional experience, I received my bachelor degree a couple of days ago. Some of you have cited many reports about street food vendors, I don´t have a lot of data, but something I know, I was for a long time a street food vendor in order to pay my basic needs and my professional studies.
Food street sales in my country is a current activity to get money in the urban poverty zones. This situation is produced by the fact that there are two kind of markets for food; I don´t know if this denomination way is right, but I called them: the big formal market and the little informal market. For the first one, the productive chain looks like this: a really big agricultural company produces tons of tomatoes, the tomatoes are sold in bulk to companies like Jumbo, who distributes the tomatoes in a high price but with a really sexy presentation, or McDonalds who uses the tomatoes in its products. I know that you know more than me about this topic. For the second one, the productive chain looks like this: a little local farmer can´t produce tons of tomatoes, he just produces some pounds; he carries his products to the local market where the prices are lower, this place is visited by poor people, who can´t buy in Jumbo (like me), in order to prepare street food, because is a fast and practical way to get some money.
I would like learn from you more about this situation, and sharing information science different points of view like social economic, scientific, and practical experience.
Thank you.
Sr. Rowens Andreick Cristancho Gómez