Direct consumer‐producer partnerships such as community supported agriculture, contract‐based
regional agriculture or solidarity agriculture, have emerged throughout the world as an important and
fast growing social innovation for promoting more sustainable agri‐food systems. As highlighted in a
2012 review of direct consumer‐producer partnerships in Europe, these partnerships thrive especially
well when they are advocated as an economic alternative for structuring consumer‐producer
relationships in a more sustainable way, well‐networked with other initiatives and connected to local
and regional politics. This papers aims to test the importance of these features through a large
comparative case analysis amongst 79 food buying groups in 5 city regions in Belgium. Although the
result of this analysis confirms the importance of these three features, this study shows that the
formation of common policy beliefs is another important element that characterizes the alternative
food networks. The analysis of the belief networks around direct producer‐consumer networks show
that the farmer occupies a key role in the influence on / shaping of the policy beliefs in these networks.
A better integration and networking with the producers is therefore a key priority for policy makers
and social actors that aim to support the up‐scaling of the direct consumer‐producer partnerships in
regional agri‐food systems.