The FAAN project has a specific focus on Alternative Agro-Food Networks (AAFNs). These alternative networks take various forms: consumers as producers (e.g. community gardens), direct sales (e.g. farmers’ markets, regular box schemes), public procurement (or restauration collective), markets linking food with agri-eco-tourism, etc. Such alternative networks are characterised by economic relations which go beyond (or differ from) market relations. Central characteristics include the following:

• social cooperation or partnership among producers, among consumers, and between those two groups, potentially linking distant localities;
• money as an intermediary for such proximate relations between producers-consumers;
• producers’ economic independence from the agri-industrial system, as a basis for production methods which may be more benign in the social, economic and/or environmental senses;
• active citizenship valorising food products and production as a political-ethical commitment;
• the public good – e.g. social justice or solidarity between producers-consumers, environmental improvement via alternative production methods, regional development via local economic benefits, local heritage, etc.;
• socio-territorial identities based on those aims; and thus

• food embedded in trust, community, proximate relations and place-based production.

Through those extra-economic characteristics, alternative networks promote alternative products and production processes, e.g.
• product quality, e.g. special taste, freshness, special processing, etc.
• territorial origins, e.g. local producers, local reputations, heritage, etc.

• ecological advantages, e.g. less-intensive cultivation processes, non-industrial local inputs, agri-ecological methods, organic/bio certification, biodiversity conservation, etc.

Those alternative products and production processes are also promoted by some conventional agri-food chains, i.e. markets based on the self-interest of producers (e.g. greater income) and consumers (e.g. better quality food). However, alternative products and processes can be promoted more effectively by alternative networks, while allocating more of the added value to producers.

In all those respects, various AAFNs may be differently alternative, not simply more or less alternative. Even if minor, a particular AAFN may play an important role in promoting or generating other networks. Each producer may depend upon more than one network, in inter-linked ways. Alternative extra-economic characteristics can be fragile and ambiguous; suppliers may be somewhat dependent on conventional agri-food chains as well as alternative networks.

‘AAFN’ is a generic category from academic analyses, not generally a familiar concept among policy circles or stakeholder groups. They may promote specific alternatives, though perhaps not AAFNs in general; so our analysis will follow that specificity. The FAAN project begins from a flexible definition of AAFNs, so that each national study can explore cases which seem most important, especially any opportunities for intervention.