chapter 3 inventory of local food systems

Project CP/59 - “Instruments and institutions to develop local food systems”
LM3. It offers a general understanding of how a variable aspect of the local economy
(e.g. a food system) is working.
Focussing on food systems, information is needed on spending behaviour of an initial
amount of money and on the further spending of the part of this money being spent
locally. As we only take the marketing phase of the product into account, the pattern of
spending on inputs involves packaging material, transportation means and selling
equipment at one hand and possibly outsourcing of specialised services at the other
hand. As for the first group of inputs, both in the LFS and in the MFS, the same suppliers
are relevant (own findings) and they hardly ever tend to be local on community level.
Some quotes taken from the case studies motivate those findings:
MFS: “Fresh products are mainly delivered in reusable EPS-crates and transported
in non-cooled carts. Other produce arrives in different packaging modes, are
centrally repackaged and are sent to the individual shops.”
MFS: “Products like dairy, frozen products and others are transported in own
reusable crates and in cooled carts.”
LFS: “We use our own reusable crates for the vegetable baskets.”
LFS: “We use vacuum bags in different sizes, labels and bags which we order in
big amounts a few times a year. The goods on order are collected in our own
reusable crates.”
Locality may be situated on country level, but most inputs are traded in a global market.
The difference between LFS and MFS then is the size of vendors and of traded amounts
being involved. This results predominantly in an impact on local employment as
addressed in the second indicator.
The situation is slightly different for specialised services (e.g. bookkeeping): due to the
scale of the MFS, most likely an employee for the job of those specialised services is
hired (own findings), and thus the money stays within the community when it concerns
local employees. LFS tend to hire a specialist for this job, who might reside in the
neighbouring area or can originate in a more distanced place, as bookkeeping advice is
often provided by agricultural organisations, being organised on a national level. Our
case study approach does not provide us with enough information to come up with
statistically correct assumptions. This is why the mentioned information is restriced to a
descriptive level. In his research, Sacks (2002) shows that high skilled staff in general
come from outside the region. However, in a Flemish context one should put the
concept of regionality into perspective. We suppose that seldomly those jobs are taken
by foreign (from neighbouring countries) people, but since no information on this topic
was at our disposal for MFS, we have not carried out the comparison.
In conclusion, the calculation of the LM3-effect was not performed on the basis of our
case studies. At one hand, given the high population density, and the regional level of
Flanders as a whole, the local multiplier effect seems less relevant here compared to
sparsely populated areas where locality is to be seen on community level. Secondly, as
SPSD II - Part I - Sustainable production and consumption patterns - Agro-Food 28