Suschain - Marketing sustainable agriculture: an analysis of the potential role of new food supply chains in sustainable rural development
James Kirwan, together with Bill Slee and Carolyn Foster (both formerly of the CCRI), completed an analysis of the potential role of new food supply chains in sustainable rural development in June 2006, as part of the European Commission-funded project, Suschain. The project brought together a multi-disciplinary team of sociologists, economists and marketing experts from seven leading European universities, paired with NGOs who were active in the field of sustainable food production and marketing.
The project website (www.sus-chain.org) contains further details of the project, including all its report outputs. In addition, the project has resulted in a practitioner-oriented book entitled Nourishing Networks (published by Reed Business Information, Netherlands), which is an empirically grounded perspective on how 14 sustainable food supply chains and networks have been created. A further book, entitled Sustaining Food Supply Chains, aimed at an academic audience and due to be published by Ashgate Publishing in Autumn 2007, focuses more on the development of theories that can aid understanding of emerging food supply chains. As such, the project has made a contribution to both the practical implementation of new food supply chains, as well as to theories that can help explain their development.
