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This chapter explores the relationships between organisational type, rationales and the barriers that prevent community food projects from increasing the scale of their operations. From a broad survey of community food projects, organisations were divided according to their primary rationale (e.g. rural economic development and distribution), and then subdivided – by form – as a non-profit, private business, governmental agency or cooperative. Data from the interviews and surveys were coded using a qualitative grounded theory approach, to reveal the barriers experienced by each. Overall, access to long-term stable income is a recurrent theme across all types of projects. However, income sources dramatically change how these organisations prioritise barriers. Similarly, the organisation’s primary rationale and experiences influence the interpretation and approach to collaboration and education. Despite these differences, our results suggest a large degree of convergence that cuts across organisational forms and rationales, and offer a base for broader regional food system conversations.

Academic and popular literatures have addressed growing concerns about the ways we produce, harvest, distribute, and consume food; manage fisheries and inputs to agriculture; and deal with waste. Throughout the 20th century, a series of issue-specific frames emerged that explicitly addressed issues of social justice, the environment, and human health in the food system. During the mid-1990s that comprehensive master frames were established in attempts to bring disparate ideas and actions together into a more inclusive food movement. In this chapter, we explore the development of these collective action frames and turn to Canada as a case study to examine the key moments that have brought together diverse actors through collaborative networks to assert their place within a broader social movement. We argue that recognizing the increasing development of food networks and making these relationships visible opens new theoretical and practical possibilities for food system transformation.

Describes three approaches to incorporating sustainable development into the agri‐food system. Presents the argument that long‐term sustainable development demands trans‐formational change, whereas stop‐gap sustainable development measures can be introduced on an add‐on piecemeal basis. Rooted in strategic choice theory and the punctuated equilibrium paradigm, focuses on how ideology influences organizational design, and compares the current agri‐food system with Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) and the Seikatsu Club. The current agri‐food system protects the environment by regulating the use of environmentally‐unfriendly agricultural practices and chemicals. The Seikatsu Club provides economic incentives for farmers to emphasize sound ecology. CSA values ecological and economic concerns equally, with an additional emphasis on social justice. Discusses implications for future study of changes that incorporate sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sustainability integrates the business strategy of Brazilian community supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives, and to understand the social, environmental and economic benefits to producers and consumers.

A case study was carried out through participant observation, using the techniques of ethnography, in addition to in-depth interviews and access to secondary data. Follow-up was carried out over two years and six months with two CSA initiatives.

The results indicated that the analyzed CSA activities address, in an integrated way, the social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability by promoting healthy diet, sustainable agriculture and social transformation to producers and consumers. Producers have their sales guaranteed due to previous consumers’ association; they also receive higher incomes, avoiding the rural exodus. In addition, their work conditions do not harm their health and the diversified production meets the consumption of their family group, increasing farmers’ autonomy. Regarding consumers, there is a strong emphasis on education for sustainability. It occurs primarily through face-to-face contact among participants, at times of basket withdrawal, follow-up visits to production and interaction events at farmers’ place. Exchanges of information, recipes, cooking classes, newsletters and internet interactions are also important. As these outputs, verified in a real situation, integrate the mission and the business proposal of these CSAs initiatives, it is possible to conclude that, in these analyzed situations, sustainability is incorporated into a business strategy. Sustainability is a structural component of the strategy, with practices in different levels of the business activity.

As an exploratory study, the findings cannot be extrapolated to broader populations. To improve generalization, it would be beneficial to broaden the sample and pursue comparative research between countries and regions. Also, studies should examine which incentive structures and programs would relate more to better outcomes in education for sustainability and behavior chances.

From a managerial point of view, this study contributes by presenting emerging businesses in Brazil, which incorporated sustainability in their strategy, contributing with the need pointed out by Robinson (2004) to provide innovative and creative solutions toward sustainability. It also presents some alternatives to achieve objectives of the 2030 Agenda, especially objective 2 (related to food security) and 12 (improve sustainable production and consumption systems). This study also contributes by elucidating alternatives to promote education for sustainable consumption, presenting cases where consumers reported a more sustainable behavior.

This study contributes to the literature by filling the gap pointed out by Arzu and Erkan (2010), Nakamba, Chan and Sharmina (2017), Rossi et al. (2017) and Searcy (2016) about addressing all three dimensions of sustainability in an integrated way, by analyzing CSA initiatives (a need indicated by Brown and Miller, 2008), especially evaluating empirical cases of sustainability insertion in the business strategy, as proposed by Claro, Claro and Amâncio (2008) and Franceschelli, Santoro and Candelo (2018). This study also responded to the need pointed out by Benites Lázaro and Gremaud (2016) to further understand the insertion of sustainability in the context of Latin America.

Community supported agriculture (CSA) programs allow consumers to buy a share of a farm’s production while providing working capital and risk management benefits for farmers. Several different types of CSA arrangements have emerged in the market with terms varying in the degree to which consumers share in the farm’s risk. No-arbitrage principles of futures and options pricing suggest that CSA shares should be priced to reflect the degree of risk transfer. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors evaluate the three most common share types using a cross-sectional data set of 226 CSA farms from New England to determine if there is empirical evidence in support of the theoretical price relationship between share types.

The degree of risk transfer from farmers to consumers has a significant effect on the share price. There are statistically significant returns to scale and higher prices for organics. Farm characteristics and product offerings predict which type of shares is offered for sale.

The data set does not contain information pertaining to actual deliveries, expected deliveries, variance of expected deliveries, or covariance information; thus differences in share prices could be due to differences in these uncontrolled factors.

This paper provides empirical evidence that CSA share prices reflect the degree of risk transferred from the producer to the consumer. It also highlights challenges in conducting empirical work pertaining to CSA contracting.

This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices.

The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017.

The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements.

The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting.

The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems.

The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.

The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous literature on engagement platforms (EPs), this study distinguishes between formalised and self-organised EPs and sheds light on collaborative EPs on which heterogeneous actors operate without central control by legislated firm actors.

Drawing on institutional work theory, this paper explores the institutional rules, norms and practices involved in the emergence of a new platform. This paper implements a longitudinal case study of a local food network called REKO and explores how engagement practices and institutional work patterns catalysed its emergence during 2013–2020.

The findings of this study show that actors engaged within the REKO platform participated in institutional work patterns of disruption, creation and maintenance, which drove the development of the platform and ensured its viability.

This paper encourages future research to further explore how different types of EPs emerge and function.

The rise of CEPs pushes the dominant managerial orientation to progress from the management “of” a platform to managing “within” a platform. For managers, this means developing novel practices for engaging and committing a versatile set of actors to nurture open-ended, multi-sided collaboration.

This study contributes by conceptualising different types of platforms with a particular focus on CEPs and explicating the engagement practices and institutional work patterns that catalyse their emergence.

The aim of this paper is to explore parents' and teens' perspectives on the significance of being able to cook.

In this qualitative study, 22 families participated in in‐depth interviews that explored their perspectives on food in the family and the significance of being able to cook. The sample was socio‐economically diverse and drew from one urban and one rural community in British Columbia, Canada.

The main themes from participants' descriptions of the significance of home cooking were that home cooking gave families control over their food supply, helped them to connect to others, enabled them to explore their own and others' food cultures and, in the case of teens, become more independent.

The paper shows that the familial motivations for home cooking go beyond concerns for health or home economy and would benefit from further exploration.

For food producers and retailers, cooking instructors, dieticians, food scholars and writers, understanding familial motivations for home cooking provides the opportunity to better target family cooks with food products or services, and to encourage increased home cooking as a means to promote healthier, more sustainable diets and socially rich family food practices.

A perceived broad‐based decline in home cooking has received a great deal of attention in the UK and elsewhere. In contrast, this paper describes how participating families really do see value in home cooking—though they place as much emphasis on social, cultural and personal motivations as they do nutritional health.

Although the generation of social value is the focus of social entrepreneurship, little research attention is paid on how social value and transformation can be created. By adopting a market approach, this study aims to develop a framework showing how social enterprises in tourism/hospitality can generate social value and transformation.

A thorough literature review revealed that a market approach is an appropriate lens for understanding social entrepreneurship. Consequently, a framework based on “learning with the market” is proposed as a useful tool for identifying, managing and also creating (new) opportunities for social ventures. The justification and the theoretical underpinnings of the market-based framework are further supported by discussing various other theories and concepts.

The framework identifies three capabilities that social entrepreneurs need to develop for generating social value and transformation: network structure, market practices and market pictures. Several examples from tourism and hospitality social enterprises are analyzed for showing the applicability and usefulness of the framework.

The paper proposes a conceptual framework as well as several research directions for further testing, refining and expanding it.

By applying the framework on several tourism and hospitality social enterprises, the paper provides practical implications about the capabilities that social enterprises should develop for engaging with other market actors to identify and exploit (new) market opportunities for social value co-creation, and influence market plasticity for forming new markets and driving social change.

The suggested framework identifies the capabilities and the ways in which (tourism/hospitality) social enterprises can engage with and form markets for co-creating social value and escalating their social impacts through social transformation.

The paper provides a new marketing approach (that overcomes the limitations of traditional economic theories) for understanding how social enterprises can shape, manage and engage with social markets for generating social value.

Transformative learning experiences can expand individual personal and professional capacity. In this work, the meaning and significance of individual growth is viewed through the lens of public value, focusing on the connection between person and place. This chapter details how Nuffield International Farming Scholars perceive public value contributions stemming from their individual development and subsequent engagement in civic life and community development. Voices of program participants provide insight on capacity building experiences as part of sustainable community development efforts, and how perceived outcomes for individuals such as professional and personal benefits, post-program engagement, and a sense of reciprocity are motivators leading to public value contribution.