From Grassroots to Platforms: How Digitalisation Reconfigures Learning and Engagement with Food

Within the growing body of research on alternative food networks (AFNs), recent studies have begun to address the role of digitalisation in facilitating the adoption of more sustainable food practices. So far, however, attention has mainly been paid to the impacts and implications of technological advancements on small-scale food producers by stressing how digital platforms may offer a possible alternative to global agribusiness through opening up a new terrain of engagement and activism around food, which may help grassroots local food networks to ‘scale-up’. In this chapter we aim to advance the discussion focusing on how digitalisation reconfigures the ‘learning by doing’ which has been often highlighted as an important feature of AFNs. As underlined by several studies which have focused on new supply networks, through alternative provisioning people do not just find the food they want to buy. The ongoing networking activities among peers within AFNs can facilitate different learning processes by leveraging individuals’ capacity to understand the intricate interdependence of environmental, social, and economic issues. By starting from the assumption that digitalisation represents a new form of intermediation and using 83 in-depth interviews conducted in Ireland, Germany, and Italy, this chapter seeks to compare consumer learning and engagement processes in physical and digital AFNs.