Alternative Food Systems: The Case of Agri-food SMEs

Talking about food sustainability, including environmental, social and economic issues concerns the whole product life-cycle (i.e., from the production to the consumption as well as transportation, distribution, waste and losses). Thereby, new forms of food supply chain have emerged over the last decade such as farmers markets, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), organics and Fairtrade stores, online sales. These different marketing channels are called Alternative Food Networks (AFN’s) and are considered as an alternative to conventional system (Renting et al. 2003; Ilbery and Maye 2005a; Sonnino and Marsden, 2006). It will be noted in this respect that conventional system dominated by the retail sector is characterized by products standardization, specialization and concentration of the actors, globalized procurement and buyer-driven chains (Gereffi, 1994)