Farmers' preferences for short food supply chain attributes : a discrete choice experiment on the sector of fresh vegetables in Wallonia, Belgium

In the past decades, a variety of economic, social and environmental challenges arose from the current common supply of food through long, globalised chains. As a solution to these challenges, short food supply chains (SFSCs) and alternative guarantee systems (AGS) increasingly developed in Europe during the past years. The sector for fresh vegetables in Wallonia, Belgium, was chosen as case study for this thesis as SFSCs and AGS have gained attention but are not well researched in this specific sector and region. To support the development of SFSCs, farmers’preferences for their different attributes have to be considered, thus this study aims to determine which attributes are preferred by farmers and which farm characteristics influence their preferences. Explorative interviews with Belgian farmers and a survey, including a questionnaire and a DCE, were conducted. Overall, the results suggest that farmers generally prefer internal control with a label and commitment in SFSCs while they are averse to selling a large share of their production volume through one channel. Further, strong preference heterogeneity was found in the sample, indicating a positive preference of on-farm marketing farmers for the price attribute and internal control mechanisms and negative preferences for adding a new SFSC. The subgroup of farmers selling through distribution companies, on the other hand, had less negative preferences for higher volumes sold through one channel as well as positive preferences for external control.