The farmers participation in agro-food collective actions: the case of participatory guarantee system group

Participatory Guarantee Systems (PGS) are gaining attention both in developing and developed countries. They certify farmers that participate to a community of food producers and consumers. PGS are based on social relationships and trust between its members. Despite recently empirical studies have shown fragilities and ask for a better identification of their drawbacks and constraints especially for farmers, few scientific contributions have been produced on the social structure of farmers' network. The purpose of this study is to analyze a fragile PGS, focusing on the opinion of farmers and the social relationships between them. The study is based on semi-structured interviews to 29 farmers participating to the PGS-DES of Parma (Italy). The study employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) and qualitative analysis of interviews. In particular, SNA assess the social structure of farmers in 5 different networks, the position of farmers in the network, and the presence of communities, through the application of the community detection method. Results show that despite farmers know each other, they relate little in the share of resources and information. Moreover, there's a misalignment between the farmers who are mostly known because they have a coordination role in the PGS and the farmers who have a central position in the flow of information between farmers. Such misalignment at the farmer level may affect the trust relationships of the agro-food collective action. Moreover, in the flow of information, two communities were detected, in which the most capable one seems to be the one that groups farmers participating to the farmers' market. Nevertheless, the farmers in this community have not a significant positive opinion on the overall capacity of PGS. In this study, for the first time, SNA is applied to analyze the social structure of PGS. The results contribute to the literature on agro-food collective actions and to PGS, deepening the possible causes of their fragilities, not only by analysing the social structure of agri-food collective actions but also the role that specific actors-nodes may have. The study also provides concrete insights for PGS members to better drive the organization of their agri-food collective action. Considering the importance at policy level of agro-food collective actions and alternative food networks for rural development and food policies, the analysis contributes to the debate about the resilience of agro-food collective actions, as well as the importance of involving farmers as co-creator of collective actions.