Food Hubs are in a unique yet precarious position to help the local food movement reform unsustainable aspects of the conventional food system but they themselves face challenges in strategic planning and managing growth. Due to the lack of consensus on what local food’s values are, the construction of meaning and the local food movement itself is at risk of being coopted by the very systems it seeks to reform. This research aims to explain the role of key stakeholders and their impact on the local food movement through a sequential explanatory design which seeks to answer the questions of who and what really counts among Food Hub stakeholders. Relying on stakeholder theory, stakeholder salience and social movement frameworks, the research has shown that Food Hubs consider their internal and customer stakeholders as highly important to strategic planning, yet could work more effectively at engaging regulatory and community stakeholders to construct and advance their own objectives as well as those of the local food movement.

abstract: Food deserts are defined as regions with low average income, low accessibility to grocery stores, and high adverse health outcomes. Food deserts have thus become an important area of public health research, and many actions are being taken across the country to "solve" the variety of problems food deserts represent. Despite the many solutions promoted to improve food security, healthy food access, and health outcomes among individuals living in food desert areas, not all activities have been critically assessed for their potential for sustained impact. Further, little research has been conducted in the state of Arizona regarding food-related ‘assets’ available to employ in solutions to food desert problems. This analysis gives a glimpse into the complex nature of food deserts, which are impacted by a variety of factors, from economics to public policy to culture. It further provides a current assessment of available assets for potential use in ameliorating the negative impacts of food deserts on Arizona citizens. A graphical asset mapping analysis offers specific consideration of farmers markets and food hubs to possibly aid food deserts in the state. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Biology 2015

Food hubs, a new model of values-based agro-food enterprise, are promoted by their advocates as a means to simultaneously improve the livelihoods of small and mid-sized farmers, increase the social and environmental sustainability of the food system, and supply the ever increasing consumer demand for health, local food. Noting the contradictions embedded in the promise of simultaneously generating both social values and economic value, this study explores how goals of promoting positive social, economic, or environmental change are achieved and/or inhibited when implemented though marketbased activities. Through a series of three in-depth case studies of food hubs in the Southeastern United States, the three papers compiled in this dissertation investigate how food hubs work to realize abstract non-financial goals (e.g. ‘helping family farmers’, ‘promoting sustainable food systems’) through the mundane work of food aggregation and distribution. Particular attention is paid to the experiences of mid-sized farmers who participate in food hubs, and the historic, material, and subjective processes that influence the development of food hubs and their many stakeholders. Highlighting the tensions and negotiations inherent to the hybrid social-and-monetary work of food hubs, I assert the need for an analytical framework that can account for the more-than-financial dimensions of economic and ethical praxis. To that end, I draw on the theories of J.K. Gibson-Graham to suggest that food hubs are best understood as a form of post-capitalist enterprise situated within a community agro-food economy, wherein reciprocal and interdependent relationships are forged between new economic subjects through deliberate and ongoing negotiation of care via the process and outcomes of diverse economic activity.

The Swedish alternative food networks landscape is underdeveloped compared to that of the US or the countries of Western Europe, however its development has sped up in recent years. The relationship between the farmer and the food hub is the first one to be built when an Alternative Food Network is being set up and therefore represents a valid starting point in the hitherto scarcely studied field of alternative food distribution in Sweden. The paper used a relationship-marketing framework with the addition of elements from Civic Food Networks conceptualization of Alternative Food Networks in order to explain the creation and maintenance, as a well as the quality and depth of supplier-distributor relationships in two cases of Swedish food hubs. Given the immaturity of the Swedish market, this paper tried to explore the possible variations existing in the landscape. In the case of student-led food cooperative Ultimat and its two studied suppliers, values and larger local food systems goals played the primary role in creating and maintaining the relationship, in spite of the poor economic performance of such a relationship in the eyes of the suppliers. The linkages forged between the two entities are strong due to shared values and common goals. In the case of Bygdens Saluhall, the values play a certain role, but the economic element remains crucial for the farmers. At the same time, the connection is closer and ownership of the project by the farmers more significant. Additionally, points of interest arose for future research, notably the diverging stance of Ultimat’s suppliers vs. Bygdens Saluhall’s suppliers in the question of pro-business food hubs and organization of alternative food networks in general.