Multi-Actor Social Networks for Understanding Food Hubs: Comparison
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Food hubs are collaborative entities that strategically manage the assemblage, delivery, and promotion of food from a range of local food producers. They are essentially multi-actor institutions, involving horizontal collaboration between producers and vertical collaborations up and down the food chain, involving all actors required to bring food products from producers to consumers.

  • short food supply chains
  • food hubs
  • alternative food networks
  • intermediaries
  • collaboration
  • multi-actor

1. Food Hubs

Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are reliant upon actors mobilising a multitude of resources: knowledge, finance, labour, logistics etc. However, a considerable hurdle to SFSCs are the scale deficiencies experienced by small food producers [1]. Food hubs are increasingly emerging as innovative intermediary institutions, responding to barriers faced by single entity actors. They are defined as “an intermediary organisation or business which works as the supply chain manager and provides a logistical and organisational platform for the aggregation and distribution of source-identified food products from local and regional producers to both wholesale buyers (institutions, food service firms—restaurant, hotel, pubs, etc.—retail outlets) and end consumers (individuals and groups)” [2] (p. 22).
Food hubs, therefore, exemplify partnerships between agri-food sector actors along the supply chain. Hubs consequently serve as a coordinating intermediary between producers and customers and coalesce their common interests where food systems are concerned [3]. The food hub is the activator and animator of what Berti and Mulligan define as its ‘strategic network’ [2]. This strategic network encompasses all the actors involved, from food producers to consumers, who collaborate at different levels. Food hubs, thereby, must take a proactive approach in fostering and nurturing their respective strategic networks.
Cleveland et al. argue that food hubs have the capacity to capture many of the benefits of alternative direct marketing (such as harnessing greater profits) and mainstreaming large-scale distribution systems (such as cost efficiencies and offering greater choice to consumers), while minimising the sustainability disadvantages of each [4]. Food hubs provide some of the following features to food producers: logistics, marketing, adding value to products, producer consultancy services, and innovation brokering [2]. Logistical functions include warehousing and transport, reducing transport costs, especially those associated with the cold chain [5]. Marketing involves seeking markets for producers as well as consumers. Value can be added to produce in a variety of manners such as labelling, washing and bottling [2][5]. In some cases, food hubs act as consultants and innovation brokers by offering training in new practices and technologies and by facilitating connections between actors [2]. By providing such functions, food hubs are able to meet the demands of producers and consumers simultaneously. Nevertheless, food hubs are faced with the challenge of accommodating both the ’life world rationalities’ of consumers (cultural knowledges, social norms and individual attributes) as well as the ‘system rationalities’ (money, success and prestige attained via the agri-food system), which is of importance to all actors involved in the chain, from producers to consumers [6].
Food hubs can be classified into distinct typologies depending on their functions and scope. Narrow classification assessments define function, purpose, product type, ownership, scale, and legal structure as just some of the many defining features in which hubs can be categorised [7][8]. Broader food hub typologies are based upon operational models which fall under three groupings: direct-to-consumer models, farm-to-business models, and hybrid models [3][9][10]. Direct-to-consumer models typically depict hubs where products are sourced from producers and sold to consumers who pay in advance; box schemes are a common type of platform in which such sales occur. Farm-to-business models describe food hubs that connect farmers and food producers to larger-scale actor intermediaries such as restaurants, schools, or retailers. These buyer-to-buyer (B2B) operations aggregate products and produce from food producers, prepares them for delivery to larger-scale actors and finally, manages delivery. The hybrid food hub incorporates aspects of both the direct and B2B typologies [3][9][10]. They sell directly to consumers but also develop relationships with other intermediaries to enhance and expand operations [9][10].
Food hubs have the capability to increase the ability of food producers to participate in SFSCs while also providing consumers with a greater array of products. However, food hubs have received little attention in academic and policy circles. Berti and Mulligan [2], Manikas et al. [5], and Sgroi and Marino [9] all stress that in a European context more research is necessary on the operations of food hubs to ensure that successful approaches are shared. Indeed, research can enlighten stakeholders of the critical success factors of these collaborative multi-actor organisations [5]. Of the research that has been conducted most concentrates explicitly on the functions of hubs with markedly less focus on their strategic networks [2]. Such research can inform strategies to promote the development and success of such enterprises.
Therefore, the purpose of this enstrudy is to exemplify selected ‘good practices’ of the three different models of food hubs based in Western Europe: a direct-to-consumer model, a B2B model, and a hybrid model. This entrstudy identifies critical success factors in terms of food provision as well as strategic networks. This research elaborates on findings of empirical investigations conducted within the EU-funded H2020 project, Short Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation Network (SKIN). The project identified specific ‘good practices’ pertaining to SFSCs. Numerous innovative examples of good practices relating to food hubs were collected during project activities. 

2. Social Practice and Stategic Networks

As the SKIN Thematic Network focused on good practices, it is important that firstly what is a practice should be defined. A practice is a site of socially organised agency. A practice according to Reckwitz is “a pattern which can be filled out by a multitude of single and often unique actions reproducing the practice” [11] (p. 250). They usually form ’bundles’ of practices that accompany, assist, or contest one another [12]. Practices are ‘social practices’ when they involve the actions of people conducting activities together [11]. The actors and actions involved often emerge from an existing network of relationships and mutual dependencies [13]. Social practice approaches attempt to understand the processes implicated in how societies prevail and develop or fail to develop, forming an important part of the sustainability literature [14]. A social practice approach subsequently allows for a broad perspective of how food provision is mobilised by actors’ collective actions in SFSCs [15][16][17], and in turn food hubs.
The ‘three-elements’ approach of Shove et al. depicts how practices are comprised of materials (stuff, technology), meanings (images, symbols), and skills (forms of competence, procedures) [18]. Food hubs, conceptualised as social practices, are not monolithic entities; rather they are sustained by the collaborative engagement of various diverse, actors [11]. A social practice approach is thereby a suitable concept for studying food hub good practice as it is capable of exploring both the social and practice elements of provision [19][20].
While a social practice approach is useful as a lens to illuminate the operations of food hubs, it is criticised for downplaying wider social structures that frame social practices [21][22][23]. Thereby, somewhat neglecting concepts such as strategic networks. Renting et al. denote that “SFSCs are not the results of some kind of external, elusive ‘free market’. They instead arise from the proactive development of networks by various actors in the agrofood chain, such as farmers, food processors, wholesalers, retailers and consumers” [24] (p. 399).  This study therefore investigates the bundles of practices that constitute food provision via food hubs and the broad arrangements involved, i.e., their strategic networks. A strategic network connects all aspects of the producer-consumer chain and encompasses production, transport, and selling points [2].

References

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  2. Berti, G.; Mulligan, C. Competitiveness of Small Farms and Innovative Food Supply Chains: The Role of Food Hubs in Creating Sustainable Regional and Local Food Systems. Sustainability 2016, 8, 616.
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