‘I will know it when I taste it’: trust, food materialities and social media in Chinese alternative food networks

Abstract

Trust is often an assumed outcome of participation in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) as they directly connect producers with consumers. It is based on this potential for trust "between producers and consumers" that AFNs have emerged as a significant field of food studies analysis as it also suggests a capacity for AFNs to foster associated embedded qualities, like 'morality', 'social justice', 'ecology' and 'equity'. These positive benefits of AFNs, however, cannot be taken for granted as trust is not necessarily an outcome of AFN participation. Using Chinese case studies of AFNs, which are characterised by a distinct form of trust pressure-consumers who are particularly cynical about small scale farmers, food safety and the organic credentials of producers-this paper highlights how the dynamics of trust are in constant flux between producers and consumers. I suggest that it is the careful construction of the aesthetic and multi-sensory qualities of food, which is often celebrated via social media, that human centred relations in Chinese AFNs are mediated. This leads to two key conclusions: first, that the key variable for establishing trust is satisfying the consumer's desire for safe (i.e. "fresh") food; and second, the materiality of the food and the perception of foods materiality (especially through social media), must both be actively constructed by the farmer to fit the consumer's ideal of freshness.

Chinese Consumers’ Trust in Food Safety Surveillance Sampling of Commonly Consumed Foods

“…Trust plays a crucial role in risk communication and management, and public trust is also a topic that cannot be ignored in the supervision sampling inspection of food products. Some scholars have proposed that factors affecting consumers' confidence in food safety include their trust in participants in the food chain [26][27][28][29][30][31] and regulatory authorities [32,33], memories of food safety events, media reports [33][34][35][36], perceptions of the safety of different types of products [28,37,38], and consumers' demographic characteristics [27,[39][40][41] and values [25].…”

Reimagining Food: Readdressing and Respecting Values

“…What some have described as the 'supermarketization' of food markets [31] has accelerated over the last half century, with very little intervention to reduce the commercialization of food on an international governance scale. Supermarketization is described as the expansion of modern food retailers and their mode of business operation [32], delivering better food safety [33,34] and using market mechanisms rather than regulation to improve food safety standards in supply chains [32].…”

Effect of food shelf life on food quality

“…Thus, food quality must always be maintained so that it is not contaminated until it reaches the hands of consumers. Consumers or buyers expect food ingredients to produce quality, safe, sustainable, and standardized ingredients with speci􀅫ic expertise (Martindale, 2021). The reason is that the pollution experienced by food will in􀅫luence the quality of the product produced.…”