Solidarity Purchasing Groups as social innovators: an analysis of alternative food networks in Italy

The marketisation of food and the rise of mass retailers have created an unbalanced supply chain where, above all, small producers and customers are weaker. In contrast to this scenario, in the last twenty years agriculture and food markets have become an increasingly relevant space for the experimentation of innovative social practice in order to fix this anomaly and try to rebalance the distribution of value in the whole supply chain. Solidarity Purchasing Groups (SPGs) are one of these innovations and they could represent one of the most relevant tools to combat the buying power of mass retailers. However, the analysis in the paper shows that SPGs are social innovations that only partially achieve this goal of reducing the economic marginalisation of their suppliers by setting up an alternative distribution channel.