Pieroni Andrea, Zocchi Dauro Mattia, Alrhmoun Mousaab, Sulaiman Naji, Bavorova Miroslava, Sõukand Renata
University of Gastronomic Sciences, Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II 9, 12042, Pollenzo, Italy.
Department of Medical Analysis, Tishk International University, Erbil, Kurdistan, 44001, Iraq.
J Ethnobiol Ethnomed. 2025 Mar 11;21(1):17. doi: 10.1186/s13002-025-00770-8.
Informal food markets, particularly those managed by (elderly) women in post-communist Eastern Europe, represent a biocultural phenomenon of profound significance since globalisation and increasingly strict legal frameworks often threaten these reservoirs of biocultural food heritage. In the fall of 2022 and 2023, a preliminary field study was conducted by visiting the informal markets of six Moldovan centres: Chișinău, Orhei, Bălți, Călărași, Comrat, and Taraclia, and conversing with approximately 40 mid-aged and elderly sellers. We argue that these markets are crucial in sustaining small-scale farming, preserving biodiversity, and maintaining a connection between urban communities and rural communities and, ultimately, between these rural citizens and their nature, keeping small-scale family farming and domestic traditional gastronomic activities alive. By trading fresh, homegrown, and homemade food and goods (including handicrafts), these mid-aged and elderly vendors support local economies, promote environmental sustainability, and safeguard traditional ecological knowledge and cultural heritage. This paper explores how grannies' markets contribute to biocultural diversity and sustainable food practices, especially amid the country's recent turbulent political, socioeconomic, and demographic challenges. The analysis advocates for the survival rights of these ecological, economic, and cultural (2-x-eco-cultural) refugia and invites ethnobiologists, food studies and cultural heritage scholars, rural sociologists, and agricultural economists to defend the biocultural diversity of informal food markets, moving them from an "out of necessity" status to a solid pillar of a possible future, new, family farming and small-scale ecological and gastronomic (conscientious) tourism. Policymakers should protect and enhance these informal spaces, especially the socioecological farming systems behind them, as essential socioeconomic and environmental assets. They should emphasise their importance as hubs for biological diversity, cultural preservation, community cohesion, and ecological sustainability.
非正式食品市场，尤其是后共产主义东欧地区由（老年）女性经营的市场，是一种具有深远意义的生物文化现象，因为全球化和日益严格的法律框架常常威胁到这些生物文化食品遗产的宝库。2022年秋季和2023年，我们进行了一项初步实地研究，走访了摩尔多瓦六个中心的非正式市场：基希讷乌、奥尔海伊、巴尔蒂、卡拉拉什、科姆拉特和塔拉克利，并与大约40名中老年卖家进行了交流。我们认为，这些市场对于维持小规模农业、保护生物多样性以及保持城市社区与农村社区之间的联系，最终保持这些农村居民与其自然之间的联系至关重要，能让小规模家庭农业和家庭传统美食活动得以延续。通过交易新鲜的自家种植和自制食品及商品（包括手工艺品），这些中老年摊贩支持了当地经济，促进了环境可持续性，并保护了传统生态知识和文化遗产。本文探讨了老奶奶市场如何促进生物文化多样性和可持续食品实践，尤其是在该国近期面临动荡的政治、社会经济和人口挑战的背景下。分析主张保护这些生态、经济和文化（双生态文化）避难所的生存权，并邀请民族生物学家、食品研究和文化遗产学者、农村社会学家以及农业经济学家来捍卫非正式食品市场的生物文化多样性，将其从“出于必要”的地位转变为未来可能的新的家庭农业以及小规模生态和美食（有意识）旅游的坚实支柱。政策制定者应将这些非正式空间，尤其是其背后的社会生态农业系统，作为重要的社会经济和环境资产加以保护和提升。他们应强调这些空间作为生物多样性、文化保护、社区凝聚力和生态可持续性中心的重要性。
