How to create intermediated local food system partnerships? Collective performance, collective negotiation, and collective learning

This article describes the construction of innova­tive beef supply chains observed in the Loire and Isère departments in France. The aim for their promoters was to build intermediated local food networks without leaving the organizing power in the intermediaries’ hands. The authors take the analytical framework of the sociology of “market agencements,” which focuses on market shaping processes, to show how the ranchers, slaughter­houses, wholesalers, and retailers went about defin­ing quality, prices, and the logistics and administra­tive organization of their supply chains. They also underscore three characteristics of intermediated supply chain partnerships, namely, the search for collective performance, collective negotiation of the rules of the game, and collective learning.