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This chapter provides insights into the distribution challenges faced by alternative food networks (AFNs) in Japan. Consumers in Japan are showing increasing interest in supporting and buying directly from farmers, reflecting a growing demand for local food production and consumption. This trend parallels the increasing popularity of AFNs which are often touted as distribution models that seek to reconfigure the relationship between producers and consumers. Although AFNs are defined as a bottom-up response to the unsustainable nature of the industrial food system and the exploitative trade relations that are embedded within global food supply chains, there is little in the literature regarding challenges that emerge when scaling AFNs. This chapter focuses on the distribution challenges that emerge for AFN models that exist outside of direct market transactions, by comparing AFN models in Japan with a local wholesale market system that exists within the conventional, mainstream food system. Based on an analysis of the nuances and complexities that AFNs face in coordinating aggregation and distribution, we argue that the promotion of local food systems can also benefit existing conventional food systems, by leveraging the infrastructure of local wholesale markets. The distribution logistics and fundamentals of parity pricing from the wholesale market system would enable AFNs in Japan to establish a more accessible and sustainable food system. Using four case studies, including a local wholesale-market and three AFN models that distribute agricultural products from rural to rural, and rural to urban areas located in the Kansai region of Japan, we deepen the discussion of how small-scale farmers and their involvement in AFNs can better support sustainable food system transformation.

The chapter introduces digital food hubs as disruptive business models in the agri-food system shifting away from the unsustainable industrialized and conventional food sector and moving toward a re-localized food and farming pattern. They are new digital business models developed to support small and mid-size farms with a value focus, forming new ways to leverage the technology as a facilitator for coopetitive organizational forms. Indeed, they respond to a competitive strategy constituted by a “value strategy” oriented to the production and distribution of “shared value.” Second, they are based on an “organizational strategy” that shifts from individual competition to “coopetition” through the development of local “strategic networks” among small size producers. Central to the development of these business models is the digital disruption that has offered the space for the creation of unconventional exchange and transaction mechanisms distinguishing them from the already existing traditional ways of work. The agri-food markets exhibit structural holes that impede small farms from connecting with local consumers. This is due to a lack of material infrastructures and organizational forms on behalf of small farms that cannot reach the consumers, as well as the concentration of power in the hands of a restricted numbers of distributors, which causes the unequal redistribution of the economic value and impedes small farms accessing the food market. The advent of the digital technology is reshaping the market relationship by allowing out centralized intermediaries and creating new bridges between producers and consumers.

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.

Applying concepts from the theory of complex adaptive systems, we investigated the emergence over time of a local foods system that embodies values of traditional agriculture and the preservation of the earth and its biodiversity, community, and equitable access to food. The purpose was to learn, from this place-based transformation, the process of self-organization that can underpin a transition from an unsustainable food system primarily based on values of wealth creation to one where resources are used in a sustainable manner.

The local foods system of Northeast Ohio was examined through interviews with key agents in the system at three points in time ranging from 2007 to 2016, and through the collection of archival data chronicling various aspects of the system. Qualitative data were coded and analyzed in a multi-dimensional manner that focused on variation and interaction (exchange of resources) of agents through time.

The system has evolved to be increasingly complex both in numbers and kinds of agents. Collective agency has enabled increased capacity in the system to address the diverse purposes of participants. Yet in this self-organizing system, securing resources for longer term, collective focuses required to advance the local food system has proved to be a challenge.

This longitudinal and qualitative approach shines a light on how common and diverse purposes shape the unfolding of complex social systems with expanded capabilities.

The paper deals with the transformation of local agrofood systems, in the context of the turn to “the economy of qualities” and the rural development paradigm. We will discuss a case study from Italy, specifically an agreement between Slow Food and Coop Italia concerning the Ark of Taste's Presidia, aiming at the protection of typical products and food traditions.

The agreement is analysed as a change of strategy, implying a transformation of the local agrofood system from “local production for local consumers” to “local production for distant consumers”. The change is substantial and implies a restructuring of the entire local food network.

This chapter aims to explore the means by which rural food business networks can contribute to sustainable rural development.

This chapter explores the role of rural food business networks in sustainable rural development. This is conducted initially through a literature review. This is followed by presentation of case studies of two Irish rural food business networks; a discussion of the evident rural development brought about by the actions and activities of these networks; and an exploration of some of the factors that influence the capacity of the networks to bring about rural development.

This chapter presents evidence that demonstrates the important contribution rural business networks can make to rural development. It also finds that factors such as autonomy, embeddedness and place can influence the effectiveness of a network in bringing about and sustaining rural development.

Despite several interesting findings emerging from this research, the level to which these findings can be generalised is limited. Future research of aspects of network operation such as access to infrastructure and services would assist in ascertaining the importance of place for rural business networks and their ability to bring about rural development.

Given the significant role that networks now play in the rural development strategies of place-based organisations, this chapter has important implications for how those organisations initiate and structure those networks.

This chapter can serve as an encouragement to rural entrepreneurs to engage in networking activities to reduce rural isolation, create stronger links with their consumers and to sustain their businesses.

The focus of this chapter on factors such as embeddedness, autonomy and place and their impact on rural business networks, provides a rare opportunity to the reader to appreciate the influence of these factors on networks and their capacity to bring about and sustain rural development.

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.

We argue that in order to address the contemporary challenges that organizations and societies are facing, the field of organization development (OD) requires frameworks and skills to focus on the eco-system as the level of analysis. In a world that has become economically, socially, and technologically highly connected, approaches that foster the optimization of specific actors in the eco-system, such as individual corporations, result in sub-optimization of the sustainability of the natural and social system because there is insufficient offset to the ego-centric purposes of the focal organization. We discuss the need for OD to broaden focus to deal with technological advances that enable new ways of organizing at the eco-system level, and to deal with the challenges to sustainable development. Case examples from healthcare and the agri-foods industry illustrate the kinds of development approaches that are required for the development of healthy eco-systems. We do not suggest fundamental changes in the identity of the field of organizational development. In fact, we demonstrate the need to dig deeply into the open systems and socio-technical roots of the field, and to translate the traditional values and approaches of OD to continue to be relevant in today’s dynamic interdependent world.

The complex value chain that facilitates local food production and consumption includes purveyors positioned across a range of marketspaces who through the various ways they present and sell their products help create and convey the meaning of “local food.” Limited governance within local food systems (LFSs) and a lack of consensus on the definition of “local food” provide purveyors with notable latitude in how they frame the meaning of “local” in the food products they produce, market, and sell. Consequently, the expansion of food products that are framed as being “local” within conventional marketspaces threatens to convolute the meaning and representation of local food within specific LFSs and across the broader local food movement (LFM). Here, I use a structured photo analysis design to explore the elements that influence the visual representation of “local food” by purveyors within five farmers’ markets and five grocery stores located across the Southern Arizona LFS (SALFS). I consider the farmers’ markets to be alternative marketspaces and the grocery stores to be conventional marketspaces. The data consist of 683 original photos taken of local food framing practices within the farmers’ markets and grocery stores and extensive field notes captured throughout multiple direct observations at each market space. My exploration is guided by a theoretical framework composed of constructs specific to institutional logic, product framing, and taste regimes. The findings illustrate how local food framing practices across alternative and mainstream marketspaces foster a local food taste regime that fails to convey the fundamental principles and values of the LFM. Recommendations for both practice and research are developed from the findings.

Today, governance of food safety and quality as well as environmental aspects of food chains increasingly operates through public and private standards. This governance, as led by retail power, is often interpreted to undermine farmer’s agrarian independence by dictating detailed agricultural practices on the farm, thereby conditioning access into the food chain. Focusing on farmers’ discursive resources, agrarian writing implies an alternative social force, constructed here as farmer’s freedom. By analysing qualitative data from Finland along the theoretical axes of farmers’ interest in socio-economic achievement and willingness to comply with standards, a more nuanced understanding of farmers’ occupational freedom emerges. Freedom in economic interests and organic farming represents farmers as standard takers as standards supported values most important for them. Realizing freedom in economic creativity can be antagonistic to (public) standards and lead to contestations and negotiations for feasibility. Finally, freedom in self-sufficiency is antithetical to the commercial food chain; however, dissenting from standards displays a strong capacity to close the metabolic rift, along with organic farming. The evidence from the study suggests that farmers’ freedom has the character of a social force to modify food chains and to increase their socio-economic and environmental sustainability and to call for consumers’ freedom to join farmers’ efforts.