Producing-consuming food: Closeness, connectedness and rurality in four 'alternative' food networks

In this chapter, the authors explore some key ideas and relationships associated with what they categorize as 'alternative' food production-consumption networks. They outline some key currents of debate surrounding contemporary agro-food networks. The authors utilize various case studies to take different perspectives on the key issues of closeness and connectedness in particular forms of alternative food production-consumption networks. The 'turn' to quality is associated with the proliferation of 'alternative' food networks operating at the margins of mainstream industrial food production. Farmers' Markets (FM) have become something of a cause celebre in the UK and USA, seen as a potential solution to the problems of economic marginality faced by small-scale food producers, and means of generating local food economies and cultures. However, FM can be understood as part of a more radical agenda for the reshaping of rural space, involving the transformation of food supply systems on the basis of small-scale farming, ecological sustainability, local production-consumption, etc