Analysis of Short Food Supply Chain Governances: Innovative Collective Platforms Supplying Local Produce

Abstract

This paper addresses the issue of governance diversity of innovative semi wholesale SFSC such as multi stake-holder platforms acting as middlemen between local producers and buyers (individual and collective ones) wishing to procure local products. We apply the new institutional economics approach with special attention to ownership rights allocation (Hansmann, 1988), collective decision-making (Pozzobon and Zylbersztajn, 2013) and associated transaction costs (Williamson, 1991; Menard, 2004; Chaddad, 2012). Those concepts were already used in analysis of various agri-businesses, cooperatives and their vertical relations in supply chains but little has been done in terms of SFSC. We rely on this framework to provide a comparative analysis of their governance structures based on a detailed description of the “horizontal” relations among stake-holders and “vertical” relations between the platforms and their suppliers and customers.