ABSTRACT
In contemporary food system analysis, the prior overwhelming interest in issues linked to the globalization, industrialization, and standardization of production processes is now shifting toward new ethical issues that call into question the way in which the food system operates. Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) represent efforts to re-spatialize and re-socialize standardized food production and distribution systems [1,2] and spread new forms of political association and market governance [3]. In particular, AFNs’ food production and consumption processes are closely related in spatial terms (i.e., geographic proximity between producers and consumers), economic terms (i.e., a fair price for farmers and an affordable price for consumers because of the intermediaries’ elimination), and
social terms (i.e., the development of networks based on trust linked to mutual knowledge and to each other’s reputation). As such, producers in AFNs grow food in proximity to the people who buy and eat it [1,4,5]. Hence, direct marketing brings farmers and consumers face to face and develops bonds of trust and cooperation [6,7,8].
