J. Dara Bloom

The long reach of lean retailing: Firm embeddedness and Wal-Mart’s implementation of local produce sourcing in the US

With its corresponding concepts of societal, territorial, and network embeddedness, firm embeddedness offers a theoretical framework for analyzing how retailers develop strategies and business models determined by their home country context, but also adapted to new places, consumers, and networks. This paper uses firm embeddedness to examine food retailer adaptation within a changing home market, focusing on Wal-Mart’s efforts to implement local produce sourcing in the U.S. Growing consumer interest in local food has sufficiently shifted the competitive landscape within the U.S. market that Wal-Mart and other food retailers have sought to incorporate local produce into their operations. This paper asks whether Wal-Mart’s core lean retailing strategy facilitates or impedes such efforts to localize its U.S. produce supply chains. Qualitative field research conducted in 2011–2012 in one U.S. region centered on semi-structured interviews with 27 fresh fruit and vegetable producers involved in Wal-Mart’s local produce supply chains and 20 representatives of organizations facilitating commercial relationships between local growers and Wal-Mart. We find that the lean retailing model developed by Wal-Mart in response to historical circumstances in U.S. retailing and central to its present global retail dominance also limits Wal-Mart’s ability to engage in the bottom-up learning and adaptation to local contexts necessary for adjusting to the new competitive environment of local food. Wal-Mart’s centralized management and distribution systems, practices of cutting out intermediaries, and emphasis on standardization all presented some barriers to establishing the territorial and network embeddedness that could facilitate adaptation. However, we conclude that rather than simply failing to adapt to the challenges of localization, Wal-Mart applied a hybrid strategy in its local produce sourcing program. This hybrid strategy combined lean retailing—Wal-Mart’s traditional basis of competition—with selected, rather than comprehensive aspects of localization.

Subsidizing Sustainability: The Role of the State and Civil Society in Implementing Wal-Mart’s Local Produce Sourcing Program

Theories of governance remind us that even in the context of neoliberal political economic governance, the state still has a role to play in facilitating the conditions that create the free market, as well as in participating in new types of arrangements that have formed to address the challenges of regulating global economic spheres. Often referred to as hybrid governance, these new arrangements blur the traditional responsibilities of actors from the public and private sectors, as well as from civil society. This chapter draws on theories of hybrid governance to analyze how the Wal-Mart Corporation implements its sustainability initiative in the agri-food system by drawing on the resources and activities of public and non-profit organizations. Based on qualitative research that includes a content analysis of Wal-Mart’s publicly available documents, as well as fieldwork in both the US and Honduras, this chapter demonstrates how state policies and programs facilitate the implementation of Wal-Mart’s sustainability initiative, which in the agri-food system takes the form of local produce sourcing. As an illustration of the role of the nation state in the present era of neoliberal globalization, this chapter demonstrates both how national policies created the conditions for the emergence of Wal-Mart as a powerful player in the food retailing industry, domestically and internationally, and how the state plays a role in the implementation of Wal-Mart’s programs, often through public/private partnerships. This chapter finds that relationships between Wal-Mart and public and non-profit organizations allow the company to outsource the costs, risks and responsibilities of developing local supply chains. Therefore, Wal-Mart’s sustainability program relies on public subsidies to operate. This chapter considers the implications of public subsidization of a transition to sustainability in the context of corporate sustainability initiatives.

Bonding and bridging: Leveraging immigrant and refugee community assets to support healthy eating

Abstract Studies of acculturation show that immigrants/refugees who fully adapt to US diets have worse health outcomes than those who remain socially isolated; however, social isolation limits access to resources. We combine a bi-directional model of acculturation with the community capitals framework, suggesting improved outcomes when immigrant/refugee communities maintain healthy traditions from their home countries through bonding social capital, while accessing resources through bridging social capital to practice those traditions in the US context. We apply this lens to a research/outreach project that worked with two immigrant/refugee communities in North Carolina. Facilitating communities’ bridging social capital resulted in increased access to resources, as well as maintenance of healthy food traditions in some cases. Bonding social capital was an internal resource, but also had the potential to inadvertently recreate internal power dynamics. Community developers need to be aware of this, while creating opportunities for community context and assets to drive project development.

Incorporating Farmers’ Market Tours Into the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program: Best Practices and Lessons Learned

Research indicates that low-income consumers are less likely to shop at farmers’ markets and that these individuals are often those with the lowest intake of fresh fruits and vegetables. This project aimed to improve familiarity with farmers’ markets among low-income consumers through guided tours of farmers’ markets, implemented as part of the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). EFNEP Program Assistants (PAs) in five counties in North Carolina received training and partnered with a local Cooperative Extension agent to deliver a farmers’ market tour at the mid-point of a nine-lesson series on healthy eating. Forty-eight participants completed the series, completing a pre-and post-class series behavior change assessment and dietary recall. At entry, 54% of participants said they ate food that came from a local farm, compared to 94% at exit. Interviews with all PAs found that participants: plan to visit the farmers’ market again in the future, tried new recipes with foods purchased at the market, and learned how to talk with and ask questions of farmers’ market vendors. We argue that farmers’ market tours are a promising strategy for increasing familiarity with local foods, when carried out as part of a series of nutrition education classes.