Moving Beyond Alternative Food Governance: Explaining the Reproduction of Conventional Food Networks. A Proposal for a New Research Agenda

Research on agri-food policy has long been dominated by a focus on the governance of innovative practices and Alternative Food Networks (AFNs). While this scholarship has provided crucial insights into the limitations of AFNs in fostering just, inclusive, and regenerative food systems, it has primarily attributed these shortcomings to the limits of alternative food governance and its inability to challenge the conventional agro-industrial food system. This paper argues that such a focus captures only half of the picture. Drawing on food regime theory, which posits that AFNs and Conventional Food Networks (CFNs) are co-constitutive, I contend that understanding why the conventional system persist is equally critical to understanding systemic change. Consequently, I propose a pivotal shift in research priorities: parallel to investigating why alternatives fall short, we must analyze why and how Conventional Food Networks maintain their dominance. I then propose to advance this agenda by examining the governance of the supermarket retail sector—a cornerstone of the conventional food distribution system. Its stability, I argue, is not a default condition but an outcome reliant on specific institutional arrangements and policies. Designed for a Fordist economy within an industrial-mercantile food regime, this sector now faces profound internal pressures (market saturation, urban land scarcity) and external disruptions (financialization, the platform economy) that challenge its operational model and supremacy in the Global North. Yet it remains the main urban provider of food in these regions. Through a case study of France, I demonstrate how this hegemony is actively reproduced through the active involvement of firms in national and local food governance. I show how national agencies employ restrictive policy instruments to control access to urban food retail, while the policy regime fosters coalitions between municipal governments and supermarket firms. These coalitions help to secure the infrastructural expansion of Conventional Food Networks. Ultimately, this paper calls for a reorientation of food policy scholarship toward the deliberate institutional work that sustains the conventional system. Such a focus, I argue, is a necessary step for envisioning pathways to meaningful transformation.