The role of the innovation and the behaviour of consumers and producers in different Alternative Agri-Food Networks (AAFN)

In most of agri-food system in Western Countries, over the last decades, have been emerging and progressively spreading new forms of food supply chains, often far from agribusiness and traditional channels of production and commercialization, according to the needs expressed by different actors involved at any level (producers, consumers, intermediaries, wholesalers, distributors, governative entities). These new food chains can be traced back to that set of system and initiatives going under the name of Alternative Agri-food Networks (AAFNs). They represent a different approach to global and traditional systems, moving away from them because made of a combination of one or more innovations, such as those regarding productive, processing, of know-how, societal and governmental aspects. The reasons behind the introduction of a new element in any step or node of the chain, innovating it, can be brought back to two main groups of motivations. The former, economic motivations, are supported and promoted by specific actors of the chain, while non economic reasons aim to reach an higher environmental sustainability, to support local systems or are due to cultural affiliation and altruism. Thus, it is evident that chain innovation typology largely depends on the purposes for which it is promoted and actors who make pressures for it and, directly or indirectly, make it concrete. However, an innovation leads to a change in the dynamics of the food chain, returning in repercussions on these same actors who, for various reasons, pressed for the concretization of the innovation itself. These modifications could cause both positive and negative impacts on different spheres and affecting the overall sustainability of the chain. Thus, the study aims to go into the relationships between actors and innovation typology and assess impacts of innovation, once introduced, on different actors and their relationship. For this reason it is carried out a qualitative analysis of innovative and traditional food chains in order to identify causes and effects of innovation. A set of qualitative criteria is provided and some indicators are proposed, to get to a preliminary comparison of the characteristics of the various food chains identified.