Beyond distance
Boundary-making and the negotiation of localness in a Swedish city-regional food system
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24228296 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nancy Brett (0000-0003-3150-2567), Karin Tonderski (0000-0002-0722-6083), Geneviève S Metson (0000-0002-8081-2126) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-12 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Agriculture and Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0889-048X • E-ISSN: 1572-8366 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10460-026-10902-9 |
| OpenAlex | W7160922366 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 73 |
Local food systems are increasingly promoted as pathways to sustainable consumption and food security; yet the concept of “local” remains fluid, contested, and deeply contextual. This paper examines how localness is constructed, negotiated, and operationalised within a local-regional food system in Östergötland, Sweden. Drawing on a case study comprising interviews with farmers, retailers, restaurateurs, and policy strategists, we examine how spatial, relational, and values-based proximities intersect to shape the definition of local food. Localness emerges through ongoing negotiations among actors, shaped by moral geographies, infrastructural arrangements, and institutional frameworks rather than predefined spatial boundaries. While actors invoke distance-based criteria, relational trust, and symbolic associations such as quality, fairness, and national identity are equally central. These definitions influence business decisions, where small-scale ideals coexist with reliance on centralised distribution systems, leading to a loss of connection to the product’s localness and relational proximity. Policy frameworks at the EU, national, and regional levels further complicate these dynamics, as strategies aimed at scaling local food often prioritise efficiency and standardisation, inadvertently marginalising small producers. Our results indicated that national and regional circularity, along with resource self-sufficiency, remain peripheral in both practice and policy, despite their potential to enhance resilience, which is a key feature of local food systems. We argue that integrating sustainability into everyday food system practices requires moving beyond fixed spatial metrics, embracing the negotiated, socio-material nature of localness, and recognising its relational and symbolic dimensions alongside structural constraints.
boundary-making · circularity · Food policy · Food security · food system actors · food system resilience · local food systems · localness · moral geography · Östergötland · relational proximity · resource self-sufficiency · small producers · Sustainable consumption · Agriculture, Land Use, Rural Development · Organic Food and Agriculture · Urban Agriculture and Sustainability
Scale and Geographic Inquiry
The local food sector
Local food systems
Transnational corporations and the challenge of biosphere stewardship
Validating the City Region Food System Approach
Racing against time
The Great Transformation
Comparison of Convenience Sampling and Purposive Sampling
A Long Way from Home
Place
Territorial impacts of the monoculture-based agri-food industry
What constitutes food system resilience? The importance of divergent framings between UK mainstream and local food system actors
Producers' and processors' perceptions of locality and its interaction with the concept of organic farming – empirical evidence from Denmark
The role of “localness” in sustainable food consumption
Adaptive design model for the integration of urban agriculture in the sustainable development of cities. A case study in northern Spain
Reassembling the Social
Food access in crisis
What are the ‘Values’ in alternative food systems? A systematic review
A review of the role of urban agriculture in the sustainable city discourse
Longitudinal analysis of home food production and food sharing behavior in Japan
Realizing justice in local food systems
How local is local? Determining the boundaries of local food in practice
Coming in to the foodshed
Growing local food
The roles and dynamics of transition intermediaries in enabling sustainable public food procurement
Equity and resilience in local urban food systems
Local food systems, citizen and public science, empowered communities, and democracy
Contributing to food security in urban areas
Sustainability assessment of short food supply chains (SFSC)
The practice and politics of food system localization
Towards a unified definition of local food
Reclaiming localisation for revitalising agriculture
Avoiding the Local Trap
The place of food
Belonging and the politics of belonging
Using thematic analysis in psychology
Embeddedness, the new food economy and defensive localism
This is Not a Boundary Object
The new geography of food security
Sample Size in Qualitative Interview Studies
Economics as Institutionally Formed Process
Local and Green, Global and Fair
The Ethnography of Infrastructure
Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions
Politics of belonging in the construction of landscapes
Alongside the Grain
| Highly cited | No |
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