Scaling Local : A Stakeholder Approach to the Local Food Movement

Abstract: 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.