Localizing Global Food: Short Food Supply Chains as Responses to Agri-Food System Challenges by Agni Kalfagianni & Skordili Sophia

Author:Agni Kalfagianni & Skordili Sophia [Kalfagianni, Agni & Sophia, Skordili]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138327368
Google: 8XxrtgEACAAJ
Goodreads: 40830857
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

7Synergies between localized agri-food systems and short supply chains for geographical indications in Italy

Filippo Arfini and Maria Cecilia Mancini

Introduction

In recent decades, several kinds of local agri-food production models have developed in both EU and non-EU countries in response to globalization (Santini et al., 2013; Lawrence and Almas, 2018). Consumer concerns about food quality play a major role in this trend. The main reasons for buying from local producers include greater variety of products, better safety and traceability, better taste, freshness, less packaging concealing the product, health concerns and environmental awareness of a reduced carbon footprint and fewer chemicals (De Sainte-Marie et al., 2012). In Italy, a model of production which is becoming increasingly popular with consumers and producers is the short food supply chain (SFSC) (INEA, 2014). As SFSCs are developed in a place (terroir), their analysis should include geographical space, market relationships and governance. Sometimes, SFSCs are embedded in Localized agri-food systems (LAFSs) and benefit from institutions and coordination structures belonging to the LAFS. LAFS are able to promote new food purchase and consumption patterns, meet quality expectations at fair prices and respond to increasing sensitivities towards local food and rurality (Rytkönen and Hård, 2016). For all these reasons, agri-food system challenges are giving rise to new models of SFSCs which exploit the governance and reputation of LAFS. This is particularly clear for SFSCs of GI products within a LAFS.

The aim of this chapter is to describe how the interactions between different models of local agri-food production systems can produce synergies able to meet new agri-food system challenges and consumer quality expectations. In particular, the SFSC of a product bearing a geographical indication (GI) and its relationships with a LAFS will be analysed. The chapter consists of two parts. The first part presents the theoretical framework underpinning the relationships and synergies between LAFS and SFSCs. The second part presents a case study of Parmigiano-Reggiano (PR) cheese and explores the synergies between a SFSC of this cheese and the LAFS in which such a short supply chain is embedded.

The theoretical framework

The evolution of the concept of LAFS

The first conceptualization of LAFS goes back to the mid-1990s as

Production and service organizations (agricultural and agri-food production units, marketing, services and gastronomic enterprises, etc.) linked by their characteristics and operational ways to a specific place. The environment, products, people and their institutions, know-how, feeding behaviour and relationship networks combine within a territory to produce a type of agricultural and food organization in a given spatial scale.

(CIRAD-SAR, 1996)

Hence, LAFS can be considered the result of a process of cooperation among companies with common interests, located in a given area, which organize themselves and agree on certain production and marketing norms and rules in order to obtain a competitive advantage over other companies. Competitors can be actual or potential, from within or outside the territory, but they do not adhere to those norms and rules that characterize the LAFS.

Initially, the LAFS production paradigm was approached through the concept of clusters (Porter, 1990), following the idea of spatial proximity of all actors involved in the production model.

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