Nested markets in marginal areas: Weak prosumers and strong food chains

Abstract

This paper is an attempt to test the importance of nested markets in Italy. The concept of nested markets, born in agricultural settings, has been expanded to other sectors and to urban areas. It is focused on two aspects of rural development literature: the prominence of exchanges of resources and services on their ownership/availability, and the emergence of new forms of spatialised intermediations versus the simple idea of globalised and digital dis-intermediation. The concept is applied to seven Italian cases that were presented in a conference and then published in the journal ‘Culture della sostenibilità’. It is a secondary analysis of a purposive small sample. A general statistical analysis is not possible due to the great variety and informality of exchanges. Two weaknesses however are quite common on analysed cases: vertical organisation of exchanges (filiere) prevails on territorial integrated organisation (district), and consumers are weakly involved. The ideal of nested markets driven by prosumers or a consumption movement results feebler than expected.