Producers and consumers in local food systems are more alike than we think
– shared values matter more than roles
Zsófia Benedek, Gusztáv Nemes, Imre Fertő, and Zoltán Bakucs
When we think about local food systems, we tend to think in binary terms: producers on one side, consumers on the other. Policy frameworks, communication strategies, and research designs frequently treat these two groups as fundamentally distinct, with separate motivations and priorities. Our research, published in Agriculture and Human Values, suggests this framing may be getting in the way of more effective engagement with sustainable food.
Using data collected from a nationally representative sample of 1,031 consumers and 224 small-scale producers in Hungary, we set out to answer two questions.
First, how well do producers actually understand what consumers value in local food? And second, what explains differences in attitudes toward local food attributes – is it really about whether you grow food or buy it?
The answers to both questions were surprising.
Producers think they know consumers – but they don’t, not fully
We asked consumers to rate the importance of eight key local food attributes: taste, freshness, support for local farmers, health, safety, chemical-free production, transport-related environmental footprint, and zero-waste packaging. We then asked producers to estimate how consumers would rate those same attributes.
Significant gaps emerged. Producers tended to overestimate the importance consumers placed on attributes closely tied to their own farming practices and identities – freshness (the largest discrepancy of all), safety, taste, carbon footprint, and support for local farmers. These are the things producers are rightly proud of, and understandably assume consumers care most about.
What producers consistently underestimated, however, was the importance of zero-waste characteristics. Consumers rated packaging reduction notably higher than producers expected. This gap likely reflects producers’ more limited exposure to emerging urban sustainability trends and the kind of lifestyle-driven environmental concerns that are increasingly shaping how people think about food.
This is not a fundamental misalignment. But it is a meaningful one, and it has practical consequences. Producers who assume they know what their customers value may be missing an opportunity to communicate more effectively – or to adapt their offerings in ways that would resonate.
Values, not roles, predict who cares about what
The more striking finding came from our cluster analysis. Rather than separating producers and consumers from the outset, we pooled the two groups and asked: do shared attitudinal profiles emerge that cut across the producer-consumer divide?
They do. Using k-means clustering, we identified two distinct groups. The first – which we call Self-Oriented Actors – takes a practical, self-focused approach to local food. Members of this group emphasise personal comfort, food safety, and pragmatic benefits. They place relatively less weight on environmental impact, community support, or health as distinct concerns. The second cluster – Community-Oriented Actors – aligns closely with sustainability-focused values, prioritising attributes like chemical-free production, waste reduction, environmental footprint, and supporting local farmers alongside freshness and healthiness.
Crucially, when we used logistic regression to examine what predicted membership in the Community-Oriented cluster, the producer/consumer distinction was not statistically significant. What did predict cluster membership were Schwartz’s basic human values – specifically, universalism (concern for equality, diversity, and the environment), tradition (respect for cultural customs and community), and achievement (proactive, entrepreneurial engagement). Hedonism and power, by contrast, were negatively associated with Community-Oriented membership.
Age and gender also mattered: older individuals and women were more likely to align with Community-Oriented priorities. Education, by contrast, had no significant effect – suggesting that value-driven dynamics are more important than formal qualifications in shaping how people engage with local food.
A paradox resolved: why tradition and sustainability go together
One finding that initially seems paradoxical is the co-occurrence of tradition and sustainability in the Community-Oriented cluster. Tradition is often associated with conservation and resistance to change, while sustainability implies innovation and transformation. How can both strongly predict membership in the same group?
The answer lies in how many participants appear to interpret sustainable food practices: not as a break from the past, but as a return to more authentic, ancestral ways of farming and eating. Chemical-free cultivation, low-input production, and waste reduction can all be framed as a revalorisation of local knowledge and food heritage. In this reading, ecological sustainability is less about disruption than about cultural continuity.
What this means for policy and practice
These findings have direct implications for how we design engagement strategies for local food systems. The conventional approach – targeting producers and consumers separately, with role-specific messaging – may be less effective than it appears if the more fundamental cleavage runs along value lines rather than supply chain positions.
For participants aligned with the Community-Oriented profile, communication is likely to land best when it emphasises collective, long-term benefits: environmental protection, waste reduction, biodiversity, and contributions to local livelihoods. Instruments that enhance transparency, support short supply chains, or strengthen community-based distribution channels can reinforce these motivations.
For the Self-Oriented cluster, strongly normative sustainability messaging may be less persuasive. Engagement may be more feasible when local food is framed in terms of immediate, personally relevant benefits: freshness, safety, reliability, or convenience. The same product, communicated differently, can resonate across both groups.
There is also an important message here for producer support programmes. Rather than targeting producers as a uniform group, initiatives could benefit from recognising that some producers share strong value affinities with their most engaged customers. Building peer-to-peer exchange that connects more value-oriented producers with others, and creating feedback mechanisms that give producers up-to-date insight into evolving consumer concerns – particularly around waste reduction – could help narrow the perception gaps we identified.
Beyond the producer-consumer binary
Our study was conducted in Hungary, a context marked by specific regulatory path dependencies and low levels of institutional trust. But the underlying mechanisms we identify – the role of abstract human values in shaping concrete food-related attitudes, and the limited predictive power of supply chain role – may well hold across other food system contexts.
What we hope to contribute, methodologically and substantively, is a demonstration that Schwartz’s Theory of Basic Human Values can serve as a shared analytical framework for mapping stakeholder dynamics across producers and consumers simultaneously. The resulting typology – Self-Oriented and Community-Oriented Actors – offers a transferable heuristic for researchers and practitioners seeking to understand who is likely to engage with sustainable food initiatives, and why.
The simple lesson, perhaps, is this: if you want to strengthen local food systems, start by understanding the values of the people in them – not just the roles they play.
The full paper, “Beyond roles: shared value orientations and attitudes in local food systems,” is published in Agriculture and Human Values. Benedek, Z., Nemes, G., Fertő, I. et al. Beyond roles: shared value orientations and attitudes in local food systems. Agric Hum Values 43, 49 (2026).
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-026-10862-0
