The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food

Factors leading to differences in the internal structures of French agricultural quality groups

Chris Bardenhagen, Philipe Howard, Marie-Odile Nozières-Petit, Loïc Sauvée — Sat, 21 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In France, agricultural quality signs, such as Protected Geographical Indications and Label Rouge, are managed by “quality groups” (QGs)—collective associations made up of farmers and other value chain actors. While French regulations provide some common rules for QGs, the value chain segments they capture may vary substantially from group to group. For this study, we comprehensively investigated 12 diverse French QGs to better understand the types of actors and value chains involved. We also utilized publicly-available documents for numerous other French QGs to inform the overall analysis. While some QGs are focused solely on farmers, others include genetics businesses all the way through processing and packaging. The product focus of QGs ranges from meats and cheeses to fruits and vegetables, and further to flowers and other non-food agricultural products. Some QG value chains are focused on local or regional production, but others have national supermarket chain scale. We identified important factors that led to differences in the value chain structure involved in QGs, in particular, production chain length, processing mode, distribution mode, and sectoral focus. We applied these factors to our cases to develop a typology. While external forces, such as market competition, macroeconomics, and legal systems, will likely affect the value chain structure involved in a QG, we postulate that across contexts, most cases will fall into one of our six identified types. This typology may be useful for predicting value chain actor relationships for geographical indication development efforts, and for analysis of current QG’s structures.

Underutilized or undervalued?

Dalia Mattioni, Francesca Galli, Sonia Massari — Sun, 15 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Agrobiodiversity has been at risk for the past decades and many calls have been made to reverse the trend, not only through conservation measures but also by increasing the use of agrobiodiverse crops. This article focuses on the role of the retail sector – and particularly restaurants – in revitalising consumer demand for neglected and underutilised crops (NUCs). Given the commercial orientation of private sector actors such as restaurants, it aims to better understand how (medium-priced) restaurant owners go about giving value to NUCs while at the same time keeping their business going economically. To this end, it explores the two ‘moments’ of evaluation and valorisation highlighted by valuation theory, using the categories elaborated in the business model canvas. The results of in-depth interviews with seven restaurant owners in Rome who use NUCs in their menus shows an ‘interrupted’ valuation process. In this process, the value co-constructed by restaurant owners during the evaluation moment is not passed on to consumers in the valorisation moment as much as it could be, thus limiting consumers’ ability to learn about NUCs and potentially increase NUC demand. The overall cultural and institutional context that values ‘locality’ above other aspects related to sustainability plays a role in limiting the valorisation of NUCs, thereby making the case for the need to revise such dominant standards to better reflect the value of NUCs.

Novel Foods: a Technological Pathway to Food System Transformation?

Maria Grazia Quieti, Colin Sage, Rita Salvatore, John Wilkinson, Maria Fonte — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This Special Section intends to contribute to the debate within the social sciences on ‘novel foods’, broadly understood as foods providing proteins alternative to animal proteins. These are derived from a variety of new bioscientific and engineering technologies spanning cell tissue development; organisms covering plants, fungi, algae and microbes, and insects. The articles gathered in this Special Section are the outcome of the biennial 2023 Conference of the Center for Food Studies of The American University of Rome. Novel Foods are discussed from different disciplinary perspectives and their various configurations, regulatory challenges and degree of social acceptance are considered in a variety of economic, political, social and cultural contexts. Taken together, the articles reveal the array of social science questions to be tackled if ‘novel foods’ are to be part of a transition towards food system transformation, or whether they will ultimately accentuate ‘high-tech solutionism’ and associated narratives that work to the detriment of deeper and more democratic analyses and solutions.

The Innovation Ecosystems of Novel Foods

John Wilkinson — Sun, 22 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article offers an interpretation of the significance and dynamics of current food product innovations, especially those focused on providing alternatives to animal proteins. We first describe the complementary and competing technology routes being explored to develop alternatives for the full range of meat, fish, seafoods, dairy, egg, and generic protein, products. We then draw attention to the original features of current innovation in agrifood and particularly to the nature of its globalization, questioning the dominant focus on the “Silicon Valley” model. The sustainable transitions literature has recently turned its attention to agrifood, and, in the following section, we interrogate its ability to capture the full dynamic of the innovations underway. Political economy approaches, highly influential in both academic and “grey” contributions, which are then discussed, focus on the unsustainability of current innovations and their co-option by incumbent actors. While recognising these possibilities, other authors highlight the modular, decentralized, potential of these innovations with positive impacts for more diversified agricultural development. In the final section, we discuss demand side dynamics with a particular focus on the complex intermediations influencing consumer behaviour, not captured in many of the attitudinal studies. These include retail and food service strategies, labelling and regulatory conflicts, media framing, and the social and cultural factors informing eating practices. In our concluding comments, we provide a brief summary of the principal arguments insisting on the disruptive potential of innovations which propose to radically reduce the various hoofprints of our animal protein diet.