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To analyze more deeply and in a systemic perspective food system outcomes, and the contribution that small farming can give to the achievement of those outcomes, a detailed analysis of food systems is required, which highlights its components, activities and dynamics. Thus, this chapter deepens the analysis of the food system. We first reflect on the complexity of the concept of food system, discussing the abundance of different conceptualizations proposed in the scientific and political debate on the base of different disciplines and perspectives. Then, a comprehensive representation is shown, which is then unpacked. The food system actors, assets and functions are explored, with an eye on power relations among actors and on the main drivers of change. Governance (that also includes actors external to the food systems) is called ‘reflexive’, as long as it characterizes a system that is able to reflect upon the conditions and the forms of its own functioning, to detect and analyze threats and to change accordingly, with the involvement of actors external to the food systems. This analysis, which represents the focus of this section, provides the base for the description of the food system vulnerability developed in Chapter 4. Drivers of change and governance emerge as key categories to consider.

This chapter gives several explanations as to why peasant agriculture results in sturdy and sustainable growth – it also identifies the factors that undermine this capacity. Peasant agriculture entails a constructive capacity: it includes mechanisms that are used to make agriculture grow and to face adverse conditions. And when the ‘normal’ level of resilience does not suffice, the constructive capacity is employed to redesign and materially rebuild agriculture through the development of new products, services and markets. This capacity leads to a new farmer’s empowerment that have in the multifunctionality the key to go beyond the classical agricultural system where the farming capacity is completely expressed out of the farm leaving farmers to do only mechanical operation. The chapter illustrates several examples of how farmers are reclaiming control over their own resources by defining a new level of farm autonomy and by oriented their farm towards multifunctional activities and the concept of peasants agriculture. The ‘new peasantry’ is consolidating itself and becoming a highly effective alternative: a viable way of addressing the multifaceted crisis that beleaguers farmers, the increasing strictures they face and the ongoing challenges of sustainability.

New Zealand and Australian agri-food industries are being restructured both as a consequence of the extension of neoliberal policy settings and as a result of the increasing influence of the global supermarket sector. In the EU, supermarkets have sought to standardise and harmonise compliance, with their influence being felt well beyond European boundaries. EurepGAP (a European standard for ‘Good Agricultural Practices’) is an example of an emerging ‘audit culture’ where strict adherence to set rules of operation emerges as the basis for accreditation of goods and services. It represents the trend towards private sector standardization and assurance schemes, and provides an example of the growing importance of the supermarket sector in sanctioning the on-ground activities that occur in the production and processing of farm-derived outputs.

This chapter highlights the influence of EurepGAP protocols in the reorganisation of the agri-food industries of New Zealand and Australia. It argues that – for industries such as vegetable and fruit production, where Europe is the final destination – compliance with EurepGAP standards has largely become essential. In this sense, EurepGAP has emerged as the standard among producers who wish to export their products. The chapter concludes with an assessment of EurepGAP as a form of global agri-food governance that demonstrates a strong relationship between new audit cultures and neoliberal forms of trade regulation. In both Australia and New Zealand, some production sectors have rapidly adopted EurepGAP – despite extra costs, reduced choices over crop management and a lingering sense of resentment at the internal imposition of yet another production audit – primarily as a solution to the politics of risk in the context of high levels of exposure to market requirements under neoliberalism. The implications of this for Antipodean farming are considered in detail.

Reflecting on recent questions concerning the meaning and implications of food “re-localization”, in this chapter we utilize the concept of “embeddedness” as an analytical tool to deepen and broaden the investigation of the relationships between food and territory. After pointing to some limitations inherent in the conventional use of the concept of the embeddedness, in the first part of the chapter we suggest a more holistic approach that takes into consideration its implications in the wider political, natural and socio-economic environments in which food networks develop and operate. In the second part of the chapter, we apply this holistic approach to the analysis of three alternative food networks in the South West of England: Cornish clotted cream, Steve Turton meats and West Country Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese. By focusing on the different dimensions of the territorial embeddedness of these networks, we attempt to show that their real distinctiveness comes from their variable ability to reconfigure (“re-localize”) the time-space and the spatial relations around them. Through this actively constructed process of re-localization, we argue, alternative food networks in the South West are signalling the emergence of a new agrarian eco-economy that is vertically (i.e., politically and institutionally) disembedded and horizontally (i.e., spatially and ecologically) embedded. As we discuss in the conclusions, this further complicates the competitive relationships between the alternative and the conventional food sectors, while also providing new insights into the likely sustainability of these networks and their contribution to rural development.

In this chapter, the authors take a close look at the current discourse of food system relocalization. From the perspective of theories of justice and theories of neoliberalism, food relocalization is wrapped up in a problematic, and largely unexamined, communitarian discourse on social justice. The example for California's localized governance of pesticide drift demonstrates that localization can effectively make social justice problems invisible. The authors also look at the EU context, where a different form of localization discourse emphasizes the local capture of rents in the value chain as a neoliberal strategy of territorial valorization. Examining Marsden et al.'s case study of one of these localization projects in the UK, the authors argue that this strategy does not necessarily lead to more equitable forms of rural development. In fact, US and EU discourses are basically two sides of the same coin. Specifically, in neoliberal biopolitical form, they both obscure politics, behind either the discourse of “value” in the EU or “values” in the US. Rather than rejecting localism, however, the authors conclude by arguing for a more “reflexive” localism that harnesses the power of this strategy while consciously struggling against inequality in local arenas.

This chapter examines the increase in global demand for quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa Willd.) and considers the impact of such demand on the Peruvian and Bolivian farmers who produce it. Specifically, it analyzes the social media marketing of U.S. based I Heart Keenwah (IHK) and considers the role of “storied food” with respect to corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting in a Web 2.0 context. This chapter reports the results of textual, rhetorical, and cultural analyses of the digital marketing materials IHK deploys, and considers IHK’s use of Web 2.0 tools to mobilize discourses of socially responsible marketing, and implications of industrial quinoa production on Andean biodiversity and indigenous culture. This chapter principally concludes that the social media and digital marketing materials that IHK deploys obfuscate the social, economic, and ecological complexities surrounding the quinoa industries in Peru and Bolivia. This chapter provides evidence of new tendencies in capitalist commodification, and demonstrates how the traditional and indigenous protectors of the quinoa plant species are being denied their agricultural and cultural heritages. Further more, it demonstrates how the language of corporate social responsibility is abused in the service of less sustainable, branded, and extractive imaginaries and corporate profit. Given the significant rise in international quinoa demand, IHK’s explosive economic success, and IHK’s reliance on Andean quinoa, this case study provides unique insights into global food capitalism in the age of social media.

The UK food retailing sector has undergone a radical transformation over the last 70 or so years. It has become a sector dominated by very large businesses with considerable power over both the upstream and downstream supply chain. The scale and power of those leading retailers has attracted considerable academic focus and political attention. In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, global concern has emerged via a number of grand challenges including sustainability. Retailers have increasingly sought to address issues of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability, both to stave off criticism and for reasons of operational efficiency. The scale of the UK’s leading food retailers thus becomes a two-edged sword; should these retailers be co-opted in the fight for global sustainability or radically challenged as the cause of many of the problems? This chapter reviews the changing roles of food retailers, their steps in CSR and then poses the question as the future role of retailers in this changing environmental landscape.

This study explores policy and practice in relation to a peripheral rural region food support programme for small (micro) food enterprises and the impact on business development and innovation.

An exploratory case study methodology is employed focusing on the effectiveness of a local support programme for micro business development in the food sector, in a European Union peripheral, rural location.

The effective integration of policy and practice in the design and implementation of a public/private partnership programme can enable micro businesses to benefit from Government aid in a collective manner that would not have been possible in a Government–micro enterprise dyadic relationship.

The study focuses on one region and on one particular support programme. However, the research highlights the potential benefits that can accrue to micro food producers, and micro companies more generally from participation in such a programme, and identifies the types of support that are particularly effective for these types of organisations. The research identifies the possibilities and challenges of applying the South Eastern Economic Development type programme to other regions.

The success of such support programmes depends on identifying the needs of the participants at an early stage in the programme and in tailoring training and support accordingly. There are benefits from local government working closely with private consultants as brokers for micro enterprise business development and innovation.

Micro enterprises play key economic, social and cultural roles within their local rural community. Collectively they offer opportunities for rural employment and tourism development.

The chapter addresses a major gap in knowledge around the role of policies and supports in assisting business development and innovation in relation to micro size enterprises, and more specifically food micro enterprises based in peripheral, rural regions.