Empirical Experiences of the Hungarian Alternative Food Buying Communities

Abstract

In our study we highlight the potential role of alternative food systems in local economic and community development through connecting literatures and good examples. We are focusing on a special short food supply chain form, named "buying groups". These sales channels are an alternative and innovative type of Community Supported Agriculture. Buying groups are grass-roots initiatives that support local food production and sales. Farmers and their buyers are a community, so that cooperation is beneficial to both the producer and the consumer. The primary advantage of the producer is that it can build up a direct and long-term relationship with its customers, locally sell its quality products, so it can operate cost-effectively and optimally. The consumers' advantage is that they are able to acquire food from healthy and safe sources, contributing to the preservation of their health and the development of the local economy. These good practices can fundamentally reform the increasingly globalizing consumer behaviour, strengthen identity and community spirit. Buying groups are still in their infancy in our country but have latent potential for stimulating many local economies and tourism. We would like to give an overview of the main results of our primary research conducted among members of Hungarian Alternative Food Buying Groups. In order to explore the sociometrics and lifestyles of communities, we revealed general consumer behaviour, the consumer types based on food buying behaviour, the demand and attitude of local food by using questionnaire survey.

Short Food Supply Chains in Europe: Scientific Research Directions

“…Most of the contributions carried out exploratory analyses to identify the socio-economic characteristics, attitudes and motivations of consumers participating in different types of SFSCs [11,29,44,53,66,74,83,85,97,105,120,127], and some of them added cluster analysis in order to define target consumer groups [97,105].…”

“…Regardless of context, in several contributions a significant correlation was found between level of education and the choice to purchase food through a SFSC. Of course, other socio-economic variables such as gender, income and age were also detected in the consumer samples of the various studies, but what stood out most during the full text screening was the widespread agreement on the finding that the consumers involved in SFSCs generally have a high level of education [11,53,66,74,83,85,105]. Furthermore, the reviewed scientific literature focused on the importance of the role played by attitudes and motivations: in this case, differences were noted as to which ones have greater effect, depending on the SFSC type and territorial context analysed.…”

“…A singular point of view is provided by a study on the positive effect of ethnocentric attitudes on SFSC development in Poland [68]. However, in general, environment-friendly attitudes and attention to quality, freshness and healthiness have been identified as determinants guiding these consumption choices [11,29,44,49,53,74,81,83,85,97,120,125]. The contribution of Giampietri et al (2015) [120] was the only one among the reviewed papers to use the TPB in order to investigate these influencing factors, while Migliore et al (2015) [125] investigated the effects of quality conventions using a CT framework.…”

Mapping the intellectual structure of short food supply chains research: a bibliometric analysis

“…roads network), the restrictive influence of bureaucracy (Ilbery et al, 2004), level of economic and financial autonomy and acquisition of new competencies and skills. Besides, small farmers are also confronted with the extra administrative costs associated with direct sales and the costs related to food legislation (Bakos and Khademi-Vidraa, 2019). Some studies have indicated that SFSCs are faced with the problems of thin material flows and high distribution costs under the pressure of long supply chains (Martikainen et al, 2014;Rucabado-Palomar and Cu ellar-Padilla, 2020).…”

Agritourism-capitalization possibility of rural community resources

“…Indeed, this growth could not be a 100% sustainable one, the reason why the focus should be on the authenticity of the traditional products which represent the identity of the popular localities, and also on strong partnerships to ensure mixing/merging cultural activities, gastronomy, agriculture, or simply put, ensuring a "short chain" aimed at supporting rural communities (Bakos-Khademi-Vidra, 2019). It is certain that in the rural areas where the emphasis was placed on the valorization of authentic local resources through agritourism activities, the development was a sustainable one (Comisia Europeana 2009, RNDR 2014, Koncz et al, 2018).…”