Combining the Council’s objectives and our desire to
contribute to the increasing literature on the Agriculture of
the Middle (AOTM) framework (Stevenson et al. 2011)
and food value chain development (Renting et al. 2003),
our research team asks the question: What is the potential
for scaling-up specialty crop distribution via spatially–
proximate, value-oriented, hybrid supply chains? We ask
this question while extending the concept of AOTM
beyond the farm gate to distributors and retailers. We aim
to increase scholarly dialogue about how to improve,
expand and conceptualize regional distribution systems and
compliment the growing number of regional food distribution case studies (Bloom and Hinrichs 2010; Diamond
and Barham 2011; Lev and Stevenson 2011) by applying
the concepts of spatial-proximity, value-orientation, and
hybridity in supply chains to a study of distributors and
retailers within an entire state. In addition, we present the
approach and methods we used to address these questions
as a way to share the research process with other applied
researchers partnering with civic-based food system
initiatives