Street-side Sovereignty: Informal Produce Vendors, Subsistence, and Chosen Interdependencies

This paper summarizes findings from a 2024 survey and interview conducted with street-side produce vendors in Western Samoa. Produce vendors are understood within the informal economy in Samoa and the phenomenon is contextualized through a history of Pacific food regimes. In opposition to the contemporary corporate food regime, produce vendors operate through small-scale, informal operations which demonstrate variability and individual agency. Through the theoretical framework of food sovereignty, informal produce vendors’ survey and interview responses are analyzed to position vendors’ work within both the global and the Pacific food sovereignty movements, with special attention to land access and localized food networks. Findings demonstrate that street-side produce vendors play a key role in developing local distribution networks that connect rural production to urban consumers and supply vendors’ families, as well as broader communities, with fresh, local produce through practices of subsistence, gifting, and variable pricing. Vendor/consumer relationships and tensions between traditional communal values and neoliberal individualism are explored.