Drivers of transformation in the agro-food system. GAS as co-production of Alternative Food Networks

The growth of localized, sustainable food systems, founded on grassroots initiatives aimed at re-connecting production and consumption, is widely recognized as a significant process of innovation of the mainstream agro-food system. The authors of the paper read this process through the lens of transition theories and consider alternative agro-food networks using the concept of ‘niches’. Niches develop around new techno-economic paradigms, creating alternative patterns of food production, distribution and consumption. Particular attention is paid on the experience of Gruppi di Acquisto Solidale (Solidarity Purchase Groups), which the authors consider to be relational contexts where producers and consumers co-produce “novelties”, potentially developing into niches. Within these relational spaces, the process of alternative socio-technical system construction comes about through adjustments of cognitive frames, organisational patterns, material infrastructures and routines, into both the producers’ and the consumers’ world. These adjustments are an outcome of the communication flow that develops between producer and consumer groups and of the interactions within hybrid networks to which both of them belong. The process of scaling up of this provisioning system adds significant implications to this process, particularly in the perspective of the dialectic relation between this potential niche and the regime. The paper analyses the factors conditioning the development of this experience of innovation and identifies the conditions that are necessary for the maintenance of its transformative role. Particular importance is attributed to social learning mechanisms, experimentation of innovative organizational solutions, availability of appropriate support tools and governance system.