Mission‐Driven Intermediaries as Anchors of the Middle Ground in the American Food System: Evidence from Warrenton, NC

Abstract

Moving beyond direct marketing, food systems work is increasingly connecting sustainably grown food with supermarkets, dining services, and other mainstream outlets. It is here that growers come face-to-face with the rigid conditions of a globalized food system. In this paper we document the emergence of mission-driven intermediaries as bridging institutions in the middle spaces of American agriculture that are using value addition and strategic scaling up to connect alternative food systems to local and regional markets at profitable prices. Through in-depth interviews with Working Landscapes of Warrenton, North Carolina, we describe one path to becoming a Mission-Driven Intermediary, in which intermediaries with roots in the nonprofit sector evolve into organizations of hybrid form that include revenue-generating activities. This institutional heterodoxy allows lateral alliances with diverse entities that help recombine existing resources in new ways, enabling the organization to demonstrate long-term commitment to the local food project while successfully improvising to survive in a highly competitive and corporatized industry. [Working Landscapes, local food systems, mission-driven intermediaries, supply chains]

The Analysis of Regional Features of the Institutional Development of Russian Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

“…Thus, Russian and European practice suggest several SME criteria: either the number of employees or the turnover of an enterprise. In addition, national business support systems in the EU allow enterprise owners to use tax treatment, subsidies and public transfers in a differentiated and flexible manner, depending on the proposed criteria (Walczak & Voss, 2013;Mitrut & Constantin, 2015;Narooz & Child, 2017;Strielkowski et al, 2016;Tewari et al, 2018;Toomsalu et al, 2019).…”

The Maker-Manufacturing Nexus as a Place-Connecting Strategy: Implications for Regions Left Behind

“…There are obvious applications in agriculture, with strong rural foundations and support institutions that offer the potential to inform urban-based agricultural initiatives, including efforts to place urban farms within abandoned city blocks in areas facing high rates of population decline. An illustrative example of this is Working Landscapes in Warren County, North Carolina, a nonprofit organization that expands opportunities for rural farming in communities of color by forging connections to urban-based initiatives seeking to improve healthy food access for low-income residents (Tewari et al 2018). As with the CTD, Working Landscapes was initially incubated in a smaller, rural community, resulting in a mediating institution that brings rural resources to struggling urban populations in dire need of services and support.…”

Local Motivations, Regional Implications: Scaling from Local to Regional Food Systems in Northeastern North Carolina

“…These networks give the local food movement the ability to create equitable outcomes by redistributing value along the value chain instead of directly to commodity producers, as well as creating collaborative processes of governance (Whatmore, Stassart, & Renting, 2003). While the greatest emphasis has been on local food production, Donald (2008) and Tewari, Kelmenson, Guinn, Cumming, and Colloredo-Mansfeld (2018) point to the (understudied) importance of intermediaries' role in developing processing, distribution and retailing capacity-the processes needed to expand and enhance alternative food systems.…”

“…Developing local or regional food systems work often relies on leadership from within the community, while public universities and institutions may play a role in seeding some of these relationships and infrastructure investments in regional food systems work (Dunning, Bloom, & Creamer, 2015;Inman, 2015;PolicyLink, 2001). This literature, and much of the literature focusing on the politics of local food, implicitly points to the importance of relationships, and therefore social networks, in initiating new food systems from the ground up (Hinrichs, 2010;Tewari et al, 2018;Watson, Treadwell, & Bucklin, 2018). Building upon this emphasis in the literature, an examination of relationships among stakeholders is central to this study of northeastern North Carolina's regional food system.…”