Value(s) Based Food Systems

Background:  Value-Based vs. Value(s)-Based Supply Chains

In building supply chains, and hence value chains, many considerations are taken into account.  What price can I buy and sell an item?  Is my shipping efficient enough to be profitable?  Can I ensure a steady stream of materials to manufacture my product?  A value-based food system (essentially a value chain approach to food systems) takes into account the addition of value to the product at each step of the process and balances that with the economic costs to add that value.  The approach ensures that adequate profit is made in the production of the item.

Alternatively a value(s)-based supply chain takes into account the traditional value chain perspective while adding a strong emphasis on social, environmental, and community values in addition to economic considerations (see examples here).  Consumers must have the awareness and the will to pay for these additional values in a product.  Fair Trade is one example of a values-based supply chain, recent research has explored this and other VBSC systems.  Defined in more detail:  a values-based supply chain (VBSC) is a production and marketing and channel that maintains the identity of the farmers and ranchers who grow or raise a product, and that preserves the social, environmental, and community values that are incorporated into production. The VBSC provides a channel to communicate to the buyer that their values are supported all the way through the food chain. VBSCs are important to sustainable agriculture because they efficiently connect products to markets, while providing reassurance to consumers that core practices or values have been upheld. These may include equitable incomes for farmers and food system workers, ecological sustainability, community building capacity, healthy food access, or a combination of values driven by consumer demand.

One common critique of this framework is that it comes from a perspective of priviledge.  Many people find it difficult to afford food on a week to week basis so how are they supposed to be able to live our their values and provide healthy and nourishing foods for their families while also investing in their communities?  Consider Goshen Farmers Market's Share the Bounty program or the Double Up Food Bucks programs springing up across Michigan and starting up here in Indiana (HEAL double program Fort Wayne).  At the end of the day there are already subsidies in our US food system - currently these subsidies are incentivizing monoculture corn and soybean production.  There has been recent movement in the Farm Bill to incentivize buying food from farms and farmers markets through the SNAP program.  Organizations like NSAC continue to advocate for a national investment in a VBSC.  In the meantime non-profit and grant-funded agencies fill the gap.