‘None of this would have worked if it was just one of us.’ Collaboration across regional community-supported agriculture networks.

The pandemic has highlighted the vulnerabilities of global supply chains and the instability of our food systems. Demand for more resilient and sustainable forms of food provision has rapidly increased, fuelling people's engagement in the alternative practice of community-supported agriculture (CSA). In CSA local farmers and households share the costs and products of farming, allowing them to organise their food provision around short supply chains and in relative independence of markets. While this may offer a prefigurative vision for a non-commercial and sustainable food system, CSA is considered limited regarding its scalability and social accessibility. However, these concerns only apply to individual CSAs, whereas we know little about the capacity of multi-CSA networks to expand and institutionalise the practice, and thereby possibly overcome its shortcomings. This paper aims to alleviate this blind spot. It investigates the dynamics of local and regional CSA collaboration in Wales and Saxony, drawing on qualitative case studies based on documentary analysis, interviews, and observation. Through a lens of politico-economic social movement theory, the paper characterises the contextual conditions, structures, aims and practices of CSA networks, explains their achievements and challenges, and discusses their capacities for expanding and institutionalising CSA. The paper finds multi-CSA networks to offer major benefits by sharing expertise and resources and engaging in community activities and policy advocacy. However, it also reveals challenges for CSA’s scalability and autonomy due to the networks’ reliance on third-party supporters and funding, as well as competitive tensions between network members. It concludes by discussing possible responses to these challenges by CSAs and policymakers.