Réflexions sur la quantification de la production alimentaire en circuits courts : une analyse empirique sur la Province de Liège pour la période 2015-2020

Abstract

The last decades have allowed us to point out the failures of the food-processing industry. Faced with repeating food scandals, the rise of new technologies and the generalized opacity on the entire food distribution channels, some producers decided to change the way they produce and distribute their products.

If the consumers’ motivations and challenges have been widely studied, producers on the other hand were rarely the subject of research. However, by deciding to commercialize their production through short food supply chains, and by the way deciding to adopt a farm-to-fork system, those producers freed themselves from numerous constraints linked to conventional distribution channels. For instance, they could grow closer to the final consumers and recover the added value that was lost when dealing with big distributors.

In addition to drawing up portraits and motivations of the producers engaged in such alternative circuits, this paper attempts to determine if it is possible to quantify an evolution of the production in local food networks, in the Liège province since 2015. The first part of this thesis develops the current local food network in the Liège province, but also introduces a definition of “Short food supply chains” as well as the issues and legislation associated to it. Then, a quantitative study based on existing data tries to determine what has been the evolution of production in local distribution networks. To conclude, a qualitative analysis of about fifteen active producers in local food channels tries to establish the typical farmer profile(s) but especially aims to discover the volumes and quantities that they commercialized.