Untangling the role of social relationships for overcoming challenges in local food systems: a case study of farmers in Québec, Canada

Abstract

Advocates for re-localizing food systems often encourage consumers to support local farmers and strengthen local food economies. Yet, local food systems hinge not only on consumers’ willingness to buy local food but also on whether farmers have the social support networks to address diverse challenges during food production and distribution. This study characterizes the challenges and support systems of farmers selling to local markets in Québec, Canada, across multiple growing seasons using a mixed-methods research design. We sent an online questionnaire to 1046 farmers and conducted follow-up interviews with 15 of the 133 respondents. Our findings show that farmers relied on an average of four support actor groups, particularly employees, customers, and other farmers. Actors played distinct roles in terms of the importance, frequency, and formality of interactions, providing immediate and long-term support through formal and informal relationships across multiple spatial scales (farm, local community, and regional/international). Our thematic analysis showed that support actors helped farmers in four key domains: (1) Knowledge sharing and emotional support; (2) Labour and workforce; (3) Material and financial aid; and (4) Consumer education and business promotion. Farmer associations provided resources to tackle various challenges, acting as bridges across multiple support actor groups. Yet, our results suggest that political desires to encourage local food systems are in some cases poorly matched with resources to address specific types of challenges farmers face. Specifically, overlooking the role of diverse social support actors in helping farmers build food production and distribution capacity could undermine efforts to foster localization. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10460-022-10343-0.

From values to actions in agriculture: A web of actors shape Norwegian farmers' enactment of relational values

“…First, all participants expressed relational values predominantly rooted in three relationships: to farmland, to nature more broadly, and a connection to past, present and future farming communities. Farming communities at the local scale are diverse and consist of both farmers and non‐farmers, which can provide a stable backbone for farmers to facilitate cooperation and learning (Schreiber et al., 2023; Skaalsveen et al., 2020). The relational values could be grouped into five categories: care , respect , joy and pride , cooperation and intergenerational thinking .…”

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Diversifying agrifood systems to ensure global food security following the Russia–Ukraine crisis

“…To increase the marketability of these alternative foods, attention should be drawn toward strengthening independent local and regional food systems. This can be achieved by providing a support network to farmers selling through a direct-to-consumer channel or in short food supply chains (SFSC) markets (Jarzebowski et al, 2020;Schreiber et al, 2022). For instance, policymakers ought to put into action the delivery of high-quality workflow for the value-added processing, storage and distribution of fresh products to local communities that can help farmers retain a larger portion of the retail value of food, and enhance resilience to shocks in the international supply chain (Enthoven and Van den Broeck, 2021).…”