The role of relational markets and farmer agency in the pursuit of agroecological principles at Flemish beef farms

In our exploration of what sustains and limits agroecological practices at beef farms in Flanders, the relevance of alternative food networks as an assisting or even necessary factor in putting agroecological principles into practice became increasingly clear. The question remained, however, whether alternative, market-based arrangements could in any way be scaled up. This led us to analyze how
alternative and not so alternative market exchanges were different and connected. In this paper, we navigate through the rich debates within economic sociology on the social structural basis of market exchanges. We identified two challenges: (i) synthesizing the emphasis of Marxian political economy on
objective material relations, and the emphasis of actor-centered approaches on cultural rules in one theory of agency; and (ii) creating a single framework of market exchanges that accommodates the varying influences personal relations among actors have on actual market exchanges. We argue that the work of critical realists such as Douglas Porpora on agency, and the heterodox economist William Jackson on relational markets can be instrumental in meeting these two challenges, respectively. In the second part of this paper, we highlight some observations from our interviews with Flemish beef farmers that triggered these critical reflections on existing approaches to market exchanges in agrofood studies. Developed in 2018, this practice-theoretical framework has since then been applied extensively in the context of beef farming in Flanders (cfr. Ph. D. dissertation, 2021), confirming its versatility and explanatory power for studying alternative and not so alternative market based food networks.