ABSTRACT
Short supply food chains (SSFCs) have long existed. Before the mid-nineteenth century, Paris was for example mainly supplied by its surrounding agriculture (Fleury and Donadieu 1997). In the countryside it was (and still is) not unlikely that people bought or exchanged local food products in more or less merchant relations. The reduction of transportation costs, as well as the development of agro-based industries and long anonymous supply chains have loosened, and in most cases broken, the relation between growers and end-users.
