Abstract
Alternative food networks (AFNs), and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in particular, are an example of sustainable farming practices. This paper focuses on regional cooperation and its consequences for food security by evaluating data from German field studies. Currently, the market share of CSA in Germany is marginal in absolute terms. However, there is great potential for increase as there is at least one CSA farm in almost every German region. The objective of this study is to assess the potential of CSA diffusion through regional cooperation and its impacts on the food sovereignty of a region. After elucidating the importance of food sovereignty as an indicator of food security and introducing the concept of CSA, we present an analytical framework for regional cooperation in CSA. Here we analyse (1) “Who cooperates?”, (2) “Why does cooperation occur?” and (3) “How does cooperation take place?”. Our special focus is on the phenomenon of community supported cooperation (CSC) as the most collaborative form of cooperation found within the CSA environment. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, we consider the impacts of CSC on food production as well as on the overall resilience of a region using both theoretical tools and empirical sources. Finally, the differences and similarities as well as the replicability of regional cooperation in Germany are viewed in a global context by linking it to the numerous CSA projects worldwide.
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Notes
- 1.
The aim to create a café ambience for an open but intimate discussion is what gives the “world café” method its name. It is a participatory approach that "accesses the views and knowledge present within a larger group of people" (Löhr et al. 2020: 1).
- 2.
One conference of the formal German rural development organization dvs (Deutsche Vernetzungsstelle Ländliche Räume) and another conference of the non-formal actor CSX network, which seeks to transfer CSA ideas to other business sectors.
- 3.
Being a multifunctional actor, CSAs’ value chains incorporate not only food but also other “products”, such as education, as when CSAs intentionally serve as a place of learning. In this case, schools or other educational institutions can also be regarded as regional partners in the value chain.
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Rommel, M., Posse, D., Wittkamp, M., Paech, N. (2022). Cooperate to Transform? Regional Cooperation in Community Supported Agriculture as a Driver of Resilient Local Food Systems. In: Leal Filho, W., Kovaleva, M., Popkova, E. (eds) Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security. World Sustainability Series. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98617-9_22
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