Multi-Actor Social Networks: A Social Practice Approach to Understanding Food Hubs

John J Hyland,Áine Macken-Walsh

doi:10.3390/su14031894

Abstract

Food hubs are collaborative entities that strategically manage the assemblage, delivery, and promotion of food from a range of local food producers. They are essentially multi-actor institutions, involving horizontal collaboration between producers and vertical collaborations up and down the food chain, involving all actors required to bring food products from producers to consumers. Although food hubs offer many advantages to both producers and consumers, they remain a recognisably neglected research topic in Europe. Furthermore, the strategic networks of actors involved in these collaborative entities is often overlooked. Empirically, this study draws from a collection of ‘good practices’ gathered for the Short Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation Network (SKIN) EU-funded H2020 project. Drawing on a social practice approach and network diagrams, this article explores the good practices of three food hub typologies. This study primarily investigates the context in which food hubs practice multi-actor food provision. We apply social practice as a lens to ’zoom in’ and explore the shared materials, meanings and skills that aid such systems of provision. Social network diagrams are utilised to ‘zoom out’ to examine and facilitate the detection of key actors involved in food hubs’ strategic networks. This research addresses the lack of academic attention on European food hubs by placing practice as the central unit of focus. Our approach enables better comprehension of what constitutes a short food supply chain (SFSC) when orchestrated within three main typologies of food hubs. The findings are of interest to researchers, policy makers, agricultural development intermediaries, and actors involved in systems of food provision who are interested in understanding and supporting the functioning of SFSCs.

Highlights

Published: 7 February 2022Throughout the twentieth century, the food system underwent significant modernisation and structural change which consolidated power towards powerful actors such as large processors and retailers [1]
The European countries where the selected short food supply chain (SFSC) are located reflect a particular set of socio-economic contexts with potential for difference where norms about what constitutes a food hub are concerned
Europe: Belgium, Ireland, and the Netherlands. They each represent a different typology of food hub models and associated constellations of the bundles of practice involved in food provision

Summary

Introduction

Published: 7 February 2022Throughout the twentieth century, the food system underwent significant modernisation and structural change which consolidated power towards powerful actors such as large processors and retailers [1]. Long and complicated supply chains between primary producers and consumers are considered ‘conventional’ as they represent the dominant production system in the developed world [1]. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are essential to the ‘alternative’ food movement discourse, which challenges the conventional food system and seeks to pursue more sustainable models of food production, economically, socially and environmentally. Current strategies of the European Commission (EC) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (UNFAO) place considerable emphases on the capacity of SFSCs, as systems-based interventions, to support food security and the economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainability [3,4]. SFSCs shift food production from the Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations

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