Ecuador is one of the countries most affected by COVID-19 in Latin America, with the fourth mortality rate in the region. To date, more than 40,000 cases are registered and their numbers continue to increase. The latest report on the world food crisis, issued by the World Food Program, predicts that the number of people exposed to acute food insecurity will increase, if no action is taken, to 265 million in 2020 due to the pandemic.
The closing of the markets and fairs has generated that the peasant communities, responsible for providing a large part of the food for the population, face countless obstacles generated by the nature of this emergency, such as finding means of transportation for the products, assuming large losses for food that rots due to the lack of distribution channels, often accepting unfair values imposed by intermediaries and that are below the cost of production. In addition to running the fatal risk of contagion since many of these communities do not have access to nearby hospitals.
To achieve this, they have consolidated their community organization systems through barter and the implementation of distribution methods in improvised fairs, collection centers, or directly in homes with food baskets. These initiatives strengthen local commercial networks, sustain the economy of small producers, who have been forced to leave their homes and go out to look for work.
In efforts to recover "normality", the State has decided to change emergency alerts, changing from a maximum red alert to a half yellow security. Although the curve of infected persons has not decreased, the population and state laws seek forced "coexistence" with the pandemic and not lose its wobbly economy in the process.