LAUSR

Abstract Value Based Food Chains (VBFC) differ throughout Europe but are often found to share the same problem of integrating and maintaining their values as the chain grows. In this paper, we analyse a number of VBFC that have succeeded in this manoeuvre. We argue that the success of these cases relies on the capability of the VBFC in question to combine both normative values and economic concerns equally, by allowing the two to become hybridised. The hybridisation, we argue, helps to secure the reproduction of the central normative values without reducing them to an ‘added value’ to pass from one actor to another. Theoretically, we build our approach on social systems theory together with the theory of essentially contested concepts. Empirically, we draw on a number of cases from the project ‘HealthyGrowth’.