Alternative Food Networks: An Interdisciplinary Assessment - Tapa dura

“This gem of a book argues that we need to move away from nouns and adjectives―e.g., local, fresh, quality, and healthy―when valorising AFNs and redirect the discussion toward what these practices engender.  The book offers a rich empirical grounding for helping us think through the type of food futures we want to make possible.  It is not enough to make food affordable and accessible. We equally need to think about the type of individuals and communities our foodscapes create. The goal: to foster those networks with the potential to afford empathetic food citizens.” (Michael S. Carolan, Colorado State University, USA)

“In contrast to the popular discourse around AFNs – which treats them as a wholly benign phenomenon – this book offers a new and highly sophisticated treatment, revealing them to be far more complex and heterogeneous than conventional wisdom suggests they are. Drawing on robust empirical analysis of a diverse range of food institutions the authors show that due to the diversity of consumer preferences and the relevance of personal relationships, the concept of ‘alternativeness’ needs to be understood as a continuum rather than a binary. This book is in the great traditional of moral economy studies, where food is viewed and valued as something more than a mere commodity.” (Kevin Morgan, Cardiff University, UK)

In recent years, Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) have been a key issue both in the scientific community and in public debates. This is due to their profound implications for rural development, local sustainability, and bio-economics. This edited collection discusses what the main determinants of the participation of operators – both consumers and producers – in AFNs are, what the conditions for their sustainability are, what their social and environmental effects are, and how they are distributed geographically. Further discussions include the effect of AFNs in structuring the food chain and how AFNs can be successfully scaled up.

The authors explicitly take an interdisciplinary approach to analyse AFNs from different perspectives, using as an example the Italian region of Piedmont, a particularly interesting case study due to the diffusion of AFNs in the area, as well as due to the fact that it was in this region that the ‘Slow Food’ movement originated.