alternative’ food
networks (AFNs) in the developed world and the
diverse ways in which they are attempting to
reconfigure relationships between food producers
and food consumers (Marsden et al. 2000; Renting
et al. 2003; Sage 2003). Much of this research
suggests that these novel food networks are a
response to the dominant industrial food system that
distances and detaches food production from food
consumption. Agriculture, as noted by Holloway
and Kneafsey (2004), has become an increasingly
specialized activity undertaken by relatively few
people, and remote from the experience of most
urban, and many rural, dwellers. Due to industrialized
methods of food production and just-in-time efficiencies
of the retailer distribution networks, few consumers
fully appreciate the processes behind delivering ‘seed
to shelf’ (Morris and Young 2000), or have the
chance to encounter the people or places associated
with food production. In contrast to the elongated
international supply chains inherent in the conventional
food system, proponents of ‘alternative’ food
networks draw attention to the ability of these novel
networks to ‘resocialize’ and ‘respatialize’ food
through supposedly ‘closer’ and more ‘authentic’
relationships between producers, consumers and
their food (Marsden et al. 2000; Renting et al. 2003).
To evidence such relationships researchers often
draw upon an apparently large and accessible body
of cases and frequently refer to individual examples
of farmers markets, box schemes, farm shops, direct