The overall aim of this project is to provide in-depth knowledge regarding how alternative food markets can be organized, sustained, and expanded.

There are today a number of on-going efforts to establish alternative food markets – markets that are organized differently and with the aim of promoting sustainable and healthy food alternatives. While this development seems promising there are a number of knowledge gaps that need to be addressed if we are to understand how alternative food markets work and their sustainability potential. We know today very little of how alternative food markets emerge, become stabilized, expand or dissolve.

Taking an ethnographic approach this project sets out to understand three types of alternative food markets: markets for (vegan) alternatives, local markets, and consumer-to-consumer markets.

Interviews with key players, ethnographic observations of market events, as well as document analysis are combined to understand how these alternative markets emerge and are stabilized and how and under what conditions they expand or dissolve. The project also includes a desk study intended to produce an overview of existing examples of alternative food markets in Sweden and map out policies, regulations and support programs that enable and shape these initiatives and workshops with various stakeholder intended to generate dialogue and lead to the development of multi-dimensional understandings of alternative food markets and their sustainability potential.

The project is funded by Formas SEK 3 million