Nurturing proximities in an emerging food landscape

Abstract

Most AFN studies tend to investigate in which ways these socio-economic constructs are distinct from conventional agricultural circuits. Less emphasis has been put on investigating how the relational processes leading to the formation of different types of AFN constitute different socio-economic constructs. In this paper, I use theoretical underpinnings from the debate in economy geography about proximity dynamics to explore the relational processes of formation of AFN. The use of proximity as a conceptual framework allows distinguishing between spatial (i.e. Euclidean distance) and relational (cognitive, organizational, institutional and social) understandings of emerging producer-consumer relations. I will perform this empirically by investigating accounts from small organic farmers located in a remote rural region of Sweden of how they establish and develop such short relations. The paper comforts findings from previous studies accounting that individual farmers are engaged in co-occurent forms of market relations but goes further by emphasizing the new spatialities and temporalities of the flows of goods, persons and information across the physical landscape that are induced through the formation of AFN.