World Food Policy Volume/Issue 2-2/3-1 Fall 2015/Spring 2016 | Page 60

What’s Old Is New Again

continue to monitor and to implement
regulations. At present, it appears that
the major policy consideration in these
discussions is the economic survival of
small to medium-sized retailers in the
face of large transnational and national
companies. The potential health effects
of a supermarket revolution do not seem
to have been considered.

directly as possible” (Blay-Palmer et al.
2013). In this manifestation, food hubs
are part of alternative food networks
(AFN), a growing movement that aims
to by-pass the industrialized food
system. Like western AFNs, Thai fresh
markets have short food supply chains
in the main and provide opportunities
for the operation of regard and trust
between vendors and consumers in
the retail relationships. However, Thai
fresh markets do not draw as heavily
upon “ecological characteristics” such
as organic or non-genetically modified
produce in the same way that European
AFNs do (Renting, Marsden, and Banks
2003), although there are limited moves
in this direction. In contrast to the
AFN movement in the west, Thai fresh
markets have not emerged as a radical
movement combating an established
globalizing, industrialized food system
(Goodwin 2003). Instead, they represent
a traditional food supply network that is
attempting to survive in the face of an
increasingly industrialized food system.
In the west, food hubs are being proposed
as a tool for scaling up from farmers’
markets although they struggle to
maintain economic viability (Cleveland
et al. 2014). However, in Thailand, many
wholesale and fresh markets already
operate somewhat similarly to a food hub.
What is required to operate fully as a food
hub is improved economic, physical, and
organization structures to enable small
producers to continue in production
outside the major supermarket supply
chains. Having viable produce supplies
means that fresh markets ca n continue
to compete with the new supermarket
supply chains.

Food hubs

Food hubs have been advocated as
a way of integrating small producers into
the supply chains of large supermarkets
by “bringing the market to the farmer”
(Reardon, Timmer, and Minten 2012,
12336) and providing them with access
to financial and other services as well as
collection points for fresh food close to
where it is produced. In countries like
India, they have mainly been used to help
small farmers’ access supermarket supply
chains (Reardon, Timmer, and Minten
2012). They are a growing feature of US
and Australian food systems. These forms
of assistance would be useful to small
farmers producing for fresh markets.

In the west, food hubs have been
proposed as an alternative channel for
making fresh produce accessible to a
population that is seeking an alternative
to globalized, mass-produced food. Such
alternatives often have taken the form of
direct transactions between producers
and consumers. In this context, food
hubs are understood “as networks and
intersections of grassroots, communitybased organizations and individuals
that work together to build increasingly
socially just, economically robust, and
ecologically sound food systems that
connect farmers with consumers as
60