The present paper aims to provide a critical review with respect to the literature on Local Agro-Food Systems (LAFS) in America and Europe over the last two decades, devoted to investigating the geographies of the relationships between territory and identity-based food products. In studies on LAFS, the concept of origin of food products is based upon a historical and bio-cultural analysis of food identity. Debates on territorial anchorage focus on the causal factors —natural, cultural and socio-economic— that a distinctive territory imprints on the specific attributes of identity-based foods. Moreover, the notion of geographical and organisational proximity aligns with a socio-cultural and economic approach to collective action aiming at rural development. A LAFS implies a certain spatial density and a network of mutually cooperating farms, firms and institutions, specialised in producing and marketing an identity-based food product, what can in turn be used to valorise the food identity both on the markets and also by contributing to the creation of common and public goods. A transdisciplinary view is required both for comprehending the emergence and evolution over centuries of the identity-based foods and also for understanding the role they play in constructing more sustainable rural development in the future.

Au cours de ces dernières années, les systèmes agroalimentaires ont connu au niveau international d’importants changements du fait de la globalisation croissante des marchés. L’élargissement de l’espace économique des grandes entreprises alimentaires et de distribution a été influencé non seulement par les accords internationaux en matière de réduction des barrières douanières et non douanières, mais aussi par un changement de paradigme technologique des activités de logistique et de distribu...

Despite the extensive literature on Local Agro-food Systems (LAFS), which involves research on local food identity and organisational proximity, the environmental sustainability of these systems has rarely been addressed. This paper develops a new concept called Local Agroecological Food Systems (LAEFS), which focuses the research not only on local food identity, but also on agroecological principles. We aim to conduct a reflexive review of the literature on the conceptual factors attempting to describe the particular characteristics of LAEFS (distinguishing these from LAFS). We explore five axes of analysis: (a) to establish a compromise at the local level between agro-food sectoral specialisation on the one hand and greater cultivated biodiversity and a more diversified economic structure on the other; (b) to geographically and commercially shorten food channels to the fullest extent; (c) to construct new institutional formulae in the fields of logistics, distribution and public procurement for the scaling up of sustainable food; (d) to develop a participatory, bottom-up, multi-stakeholder and multi-level territorial governance; and (e) to reduce the metabolic profile of food systems by reorganising rural-urban linkages. One of the principal objectives of LAEFS should involve redesigning agricultural and food systems at a scale greater than that of the farm (territory or landscape). This requires both a major public policy push and sustainable territorial governance that incorporate an approach based on territory, food systems and agroecology.