The Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) choice: determinants for consumers’ and farmers’ participation in Lombardy Region, a spatial approach

In the perception of consumers, the conventional globalized food system has shown noticeable weaknesses among which the disconnection between producers and consumers. In many cases, scaling supply chains in the interest of cost-effectiveness have loosed the links between them (Wiskerke, 2009) often leading to an anonymous relationship in the global trade scenario (Philips, 2006). Moreover, in recent years food crises and scandals have significantly contributed to increasing the awareness about issues related to food production and have caused a decrease in food system consumer personal trust. In this context, Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) may represent a different choice to global and globalized systems and their issues (Monaco et al., 2017). In the AFNs, the direct (or less intermediated) relationship between producer and consumer often plays a crucial role in the permanence and sustainability of these chains and implies new functions both for farmers and consumers. The direct farmers’ participation and involvement in local markets are crucial for creating new opportunities and the participation of consumers to AFNs implies a more significant effort to join the market, higher awareness and often a higher willingness to pay. Differently to all the studies focused on the role of farmers (Blandon et al., 2009, Conner et al., 2014, Migliore et al., 2014) rather than on the consumers’ participation in the AFNs (Lombardi et al., 2015, Siegrist et al., 2015), the present paper aims to understand the factors that affect the development of AFNs and different forms of Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) as the joint effort of consumers and producers in Lombardy Region in the Northern of Italy.