Journal
SUSTAINABILITY
Volume 8, Issue 7, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/su8070616
Keywords
food hubs; nested market; alternative agri-food networks; short food supply chains; values based food supply chains; local food systems; small farm competitiveness; food system sustainability
Funding
- Scaling the Rural Enterprise [EP/J000604/2]
- Digital Economy Sustainable Society Network+ [EP/K003593/1]
- Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council [EP/J000604/2] Funding Source: researchfish
- EPSRC [EP/J000604/2] Funding Source: UKRI
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Over the last decades, the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the conventional agri-food system has and continues to be contested within both academic and public institutions. For small farms, the unsustainability of the food system is even more serious; farms' declining share of profit and the cost-price squeeze of commodity production has increased barriers to market access with the inevitable effect of agricultural abandonment. One way forward to respond to the existing conventional agri-food systems and to create a competitive or survival strategy for small family farms is the re-construction of regional and local agri-food systems, aligning with Kramer and Porter's concept of shared value strategy. Through a critical literature review, this paper presents regional and local food hubs as innovative organizational arrangements capable of bridging structural holes in the agri-food markets between small producers and the consumers-individuals and families as well as big buyers. Food hubs respond to a supply chain (or supply network) organizational strategy aiming at re-territorialising the agri-food systems through the construction of what in the economic literature are defined as values-based food supply chains.
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