In the case of the Romanian urban consumer, ecological agroalimentary products do not merely operate on the discursive line mapped by the rules of certification. The ecology of the agroalimentary products is reinterpreted and, thus, an interesting phenomenon occurs. The products perceived as natural, local, or peasant are seen as ecological enough to influence the purchase decision. Hence, according to the Romanian urban consumer, the ecological product stands for a symbolic projection provided by their own experience and trust level as a consumer. In the present paper, we aimed to go beyond the theory claiming that such behavior is determined by confusion in the social action of purchase and, following this line of interpretation, we also intended to identify the symbolic systems and hermeneutical criteria by which the Romanian urban consumer makes a social projection of ecological agroalimentary products through certain ethnocentralizing mechanisms. Our research paper was based on a qualitative and quantitative anthropological analysis that had, as a starting point, a questionnaire applied online (with a total of 1792 respondents, out of which 1342 were urban respondents).
Should you attend to the relevant published literature on perceptions belonging to consumers of ecological products, it can be easily noticed that, as a rule, the interpretation insists heavily on the analysis of an error: the consumer’s confusion about the ecological product. The official concept of an ecological product does not overlap with the idea of an ecological product at the mental level of the consumer. Most studies, if not all of them, tax this confusion and analyze it as a deviant phenomenon. The starting point for this study was based on this very confusion: If there is so much confusion, it most likely means we are dealing with a symbolic projection at a social level. We found intriguing the idea of trying to understand what exactly are the mechanisms behind the ideological forming of this symbolic projection and their impact upon the decision of purchasing ecological agroalimentary products. The study was based on a nationwide questionnaire conducted in Romania in 2016. The collected data were employed in an anthropological analysis of phenomenological approach to further understand the concept of ecological agroalimentary products as it appears in the mentality of the contemporary Romanian consumer.
At present, short food-supply chains (SFSCs) are an economically viable alternative to globalized agri-food circuits and have an ever increasingly important role in local supply networks. SFSCs are varied in nature and practice and effectively provide many economic, social, cultural, environmental and, last but not least, community benefits. The specific soil and weather characteristics of Iaşi county make for a wide range of agricultural and agri-food products – ranging from grains, industrial crops, fruit and vegetables to processed products. In the first quarter of 2017, according to the data provided by ANSVSA Iaşi, more than 3,400 units producing, processing and marketing animal and non-animal products were operating in Iaşi county, most of them located in Iaşi county area. A large part of production is sold on Iaşi market, through SFCSs, under various forms: producer shops, farm gate vendors, specialized shops (grocery stores, butchers` shops, meat deli shops, greengrocers’ shops, etc.), on the agri-food markets, on-line stores, Facebook groups, as well as in supermarkets. The present case study aims at emphasizing the importance and reliability of the existing SFSCs in the agri-food sector of Iaşi county
