Community-supported agriculture:from food as commodity to food as being part of the community. Exploring the viability and attractiveness of community-supported agriculture initiatives in the Netherlands based on three cases-study in and the investigation of local consumers’ preferences.

Abstract

The way we eat has changed more in the last fifty years than in the previous thousands. From small-scale farming under the agrarian area to the monopole of supermarkets today, the relationship to food, and more particularly the relationship between producers and consumers, has never been more estranged. The external environmental and social costs of large-scale industrial farming methods are calling for the development of alternative productions systems, markets and markets-relations. This research focuses on the topic of community-supported agriculture (CSA) initiatives arising from Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) in the Netherlands. The research aims to explore the ways those initiatives come to emerge and sustain overtime; and whether they constitute niches of innovation which could potentially transform the food provision system. Understanding the ways in which local food choices are made, based on consumers’ preferences and capacities, provides insights on the ways values come to friction with the politics behind food consumption. This research, by taking the lens of CSA initiatives, aims to address the complexity behind producing, delivering and consuming food in a sustainable manner.