Situating the ‘alternative’ within the ‘conventional’ – local food experiences from the East Riding of Yorkshire, UK

Abstract

Policy makers rarely feature in research into alternative and local food systems (ALFS), yet are often regarded as central actors in supporting such local food systems, sometimes as part of wider rural development strategies. Furthermore, what ‘local’ actually means has long been debated in the alternative food networks literature, with the consensus that the term is contested and defies definition. This paper explores discursive constructions of ‘local’ food, drawing on in-depth interviews with farmers, local food businesses, consumers and policy makers in East Yorkshire. The paper argues that the concept of local food is contextualised and refracted through the people and places in which food is produced and consumed. It illustrates the complexities involved in understanding, and making sense of, local food networks and their relationship with conventional food systems.The paper has two core concerns. The first is to challenge conceptualisations of local food as linked only to non-intensive agricultural regions. The second attends to situating food production and consumption within local contexts to understand the diverse and relational interpretations of the ‘local’ which policy makers, businesses and consumers have with regard to food. The paper concludes that alternative and local food systems interact with the conventional food system in complex and multiple ways, underlining that it is not a case of ‘either/or’, but that food production and consumption are heterogeneous and refracted through specific places.