Abstract :
[en] Based on the INTERREG project "Approvisionnement Régional Organisé pour une Meilleure Alimentation" (AROMA), we present the current situation around high quality, local sourcing in the Grande Région’s (Luxembourg, Lorraine, Wallonia, Saarland, Rhineland-Palatinate) collective out-of-home catering (COHC) sector. The quantitative study conducted on theoretical adequations shows that the low proportion of products from the Grande Région currently found in COHC is not due to a lack of production, but rather to the inadequate organization of supply chains; indeed, each territory of the Greater Region taken individually has significant lacks of produce, but if all the regional productions were pooled, all considered product categories would be in surplus (with the exception of tomatoes, chicken and fish). The qualitative survey among farmers, intermediaries and buyers confirms the need to structure supply chains to ensure a regular, long-term supply of local, quality products to COHC. This is to be achieved by pooling regional producers' foodstuffs and logistics – based on a partnership approach, public support in the form of targeted subsidies and optimization of drafting sustainable public procurement contracts, and the support of partners in the field through the designation of priorities, values and resources, collectively endorsed and thus contractually binding. We analyze the charter of shared values that the AROMA consortium has co-constructed in a participatory process, and then focus on the proposal for a Cross-Border Procurement Organisation, that was meant to reconcile economic activities and social goals, as well as striving to include the challenges of logistics, yet was subsequently cancelled by public authorities for lack of political will for funding a transborder project with national resources.
Thus, the pragmatic hypothesis of structuring agri-food chains to increase the share of local, quality products in COHC on a Greater Region scale makes sense in terms of scope, food supply complementarity and territorial vicinity. Nevertheless, it represents a long-term process, and the empirical study shows that it is first necessary to go through phases of national structuring (for a small country like Luxembourg) or regional structuring within national boundaries (for larger countries).
We will, then, delve deeper into the case of Luxembourg: as a small EU-member State (of similar size than regions in neighbouring countries), Luxembourg would lend itself to shorter supply chains and more flexibility to adapt to changing circumstances, but only if the food supply were diverse enough and also included more transformed produce that were made available in a plurality of independent outlets, and if there was a commitment to shared values and quality charters that would have to be set up collaboratively among partners. Yet, as a sovereign EU member state, the country is following imperatives of national jurisdiction for resilience.
To go beyond nationalistic and protectionist understandings of regionality, a small-scale EU member state is facing two complementary challenges: not enough domestic production (calling for national diversification with political incentives) and the need for larger markets (calling for transborder partnerships and a fair collaboration among intermediaries with common political guidelines).
Regarding the first challenge, seeing as small producers have fluctuations and cannot easily guarantee constant or large supply for corporate clients and are not necessarily equipped to apply for public tenders, a pathway could have been a farmer-lead cooperative-run platform or food hub provisioned by many small producers but functioning as a one-stop-shop for professional buyers & pooling of producers’ logistics (e.g. AROMA's ETA). Instead, Luxembourg put into place a public demand-lead programme called supply4future (within the strategy food4future), with individualized submissions and no pooling of producers’ logistics for secondary and higher-level education, as well as the project Natur Genéissen for 50% of the territory’s primary schools. These programmes require a significantly more diversified national food production than the current situation of using 85 % of agricultural surfaces used for animal fodder and 15 % for humans, paired with high protein imports .
Regarding the second challenge, there is limited profitability of a small national market in case of larger commercial partnerships with producers who would accept to invest into specific, missing products or entire production lines. Here, transnational partnerships, fair collaboration among intermediaries with common political guidelines could be a pathway not only for such larger markets, but also for knowledge diffusion and exchange around the production, transformation and marketability of foodstuffs with added ecological, ethical and qualitative value. Yet, for the moment, such processes are slowed down by logistical and political issues of supply chain management, market orientation, price policies and various national legislative regulations, as well as ethical and efficient collaboration and participation.
As a conclusion, it appears that for a resilient supply of diversified food to public out-of-home catering, there is an issue of scale: large territories have more scope to optimise regional complementarities; small-scale territories are obliged to either diversify national productions, or they are reliant on transborder collaborations of complementarity. The former requires more complex agricultural changes in production orientation but allows for more direct political guidance. The latter involves a less complex reorientation of transborder commercialisation channels (re-structuration des filières) but more complex transnational common political coordination – particularly showing a divide between individual(istic) national political priorities and pragmatic economic practices .
Seeing as transregional partnerships and fair collaboration among intermediaries based on common political guidelines is a political utopia for the moment, governments (re-)turn to national diversification strategies with political incentives. Possible policy tool for this goal include the qualitative and optimisation of production methods (agroecological farming), public tenders to make sustainable criteria mandatory and the allowance participation from multi-stakeholder platforms such as Food Policy Councils, to collectively spring innovations, test them with their various partners and communicate them more widely.
In the short term, States (and in the case of large countries: local authorities) are doing well to push for more sustainable public procurement programmes for their jurisdictions, but the more robust ideal would be further integrated intra-regional cooperation, at least in cross-border situations.
