Service Value Network Formation for Organic Agricultural Produce: An Actor Network Theory Perspective

An agricultural market is a service system to exchange the value of agricultural produce with customers. We adopted multiple case studies to investigate three organic farmers markets via explanation-building and time-series analysis. We used the lens of the Actor Network Theory (ANT) to discover the translation stages of farmers market formation. We identified actors and the Obligatory Passage Point (OPP) for each market through interviews and field observation. We summarize the findings in three major aspects: value proposition as market culture, organic certification, and value exchange in translation. These findings could be encoded as propositions for explaining the structure and operation of farmers markets for organic agricultural produce, and as the theoretical basis for the empirical study of farmers markets as a type of service systems for organic agricultural produce in general.