Beyond Digital Tools: What Does Sustainable Digitalisation Mean for Local Food Systems?

Can digitalisation help local food markets scale and thrive, or is it simply another technological promise that fails to address real-world challenges? This question was at the heart of the conference "Digitising Local Food Markets – Illusion or Breakthrough?", held on 26 May 2026 at the Faculty of Information Technology, AGH University of Kraków by the APPETIT Living Lab. Organised as a CODECS dissemination event, the meeting brought together stakeholders involved in the EU Horizon-funded CODECS and CORENET projects, including representatives from the four APPETIT Living Lab locations. Through a keynote presentation by Dr. Katrine Soma (Wageningen University & Research) representing the CODECS project, the conference moved beyond a debate about technology and towards a deeper discussion about how digitalisation can contribute to the transformation of local food systems.

From Technology Adoption to System Change

The event was framed by Dr. Soma's presentation on sustainable digitalisation, one of the central concepts developed within the CODECS project. Her message was clear: the success of digitalisation should not be measured by the number of technologies adopted, but by whether those technologies contribute to more sustainable, resilient, and inclusive food systems.

This perspective resonated strongly with participants working on local food markets. Across Europe, digital tools are increasingly used by farmers, food producers, and consumers. Yet many local food initiatives continue to face persistent challenges related to coordination, logistics, growth, and long-term viability. According to the CODECS approach, understanding these challenges requires looking beyond individual technologies and examining how digitalisation shapes relationships, organisations, and entire ecosystems.

Understanding the Difference: Digitisation and Digitalisation

A key theme of Dr. Soma's presentation was the distinction between digitisation and digitalisation.

Digitisation refers to converting existing activities into digital form. Farmers may take orders online, use electronic invoices, or communicate with customers through social media. These changes can improve efficiency, but they do not fundamentally alter how the local food system functions.

Digitalisation, by contrast, involves using digital technologies to transform how actors coordinate and collaborate. It focuses on improving information flows, creating shared infrastructure, and enabling new forms of collective action across the food system.

For local food markets, the difference is significant:

Aspect	Digitisation	Digitalisation
Main objective	Make existing activities digital	Transform how the local food system operates
Focus	Individual processes	Relationships and coordination across the system
Typical examples	Online ordering, e-invoicing, social media marketing	Shared ordering platforms, coordinated logistics, collective data sharing
Role of farmers	Manage sales and deliveries individually	Participate in collaborative networks and shared services
Impact on logistics	Limited improvement	Integrated and coordinated delivery systems
Information flow	Fragmented between actors	Shared across the ecosystem
Expected outcome	Greater efficiency	Greater scalability, resilience, and sustainability

This distinction helped frame discussions throughout the conference. Participants reflected on the fact that many farmers already use digital tools, yet local food systems often remain fragmented and difficult to scale. The challenge, therefore, is not simply technological. It is organisational.

The Coordination Challenge in Local Food Markets

Building on the CODECS framework, participants discussed why short food supply chains often struggle to expand despite growing consumer demand.

The conversation highlighted a recurring issue: while digital tools have made it easier for producers to reach customers, they have not solved the underlying challenges of coordination. Managing logistics, sharing information, synchronising supply and demand, and organising collective services remain major obstacles for many local food initiatives.

Rather than focusing on individual technologies, participants explored how digitalisation can support better coordination between producers, consumers, logistics providers, advisors, and public institutions. The discussion shifted from platforms and apps towards broader questions of governance, shared infrastructure, and collective organisation, all of which are essential for creating resilient local food ecosystems.

Connecting CODECS, CORENET and APPETIT

The conference provided an important opportunity for knowledge exchange between participants from the CODECS and CORENET projects, while also bringing together representatives from the four APPETIT Living Lab locations.

For APPETIT partners, Dr. Soma's presentation offered a valuable conceptual lens through which to examine ongoing experimentation with local food market innovation. Her framing encouraged participants to move beyond measuring the simple uptake of digital tools and instead consider how digitalisation influences ecosystem development, organisational change, governance arrangements, and wider social and environmental outcomes.

These discussions proved particularly influential in the further development of the APPETIT System Appraisal Framework.

From CODECS Theory to APPETIT Practice

One of the most significant outcomes emerging from the event was the connection between the CODECS Sustainable Digitalisation Framework and the APPETIT approach to monitoring and evaluating local food systems.

The ideas presented by Dr. Soma helped shape discussions among APPETIT partners on how the impacts of digitalisation should be assessed. This directly informed the development of the APPETIT System Appraisal Framework, which links operational data generated through local food market activities with three key dimensions identified by CODECS:

• Business process transformation;

• Digital ecosystem development;

• Socio-ecological outcomes.

  
  

Developed through experimentation across the four APPETIT Living Lab locations, the framework represents a practical application of CODECS concepts. It provides a way to understand whether digitalisation is simply making existing activities more efficient or whether it is contributing to deeper forms of system transformation.

Looking Ahead

The conference “Digitising Local Food Markets – Illusion or Breakthrough?” did not produce a simple yes-or-no answer. Instead, the discussions initiated by Dr. Katrine Soma demonstrated that digitalisation becomes an illusion when it merely digitises existing activities, adding new tools without addressing the underlying challenges of coordination. It becomes a breakthrough when it enables new forms of collaboration, shared infrastructure, and collective action across local food ecosystems.

For participants from the APPETIT Living Lab, this perspective proved particularly valuable. The CODECS framework provided both a language for understanding digital transformation and a foundation for developing the APPETIT System Appraisal Framework. In this sense, the event achieved more than the dissemination of research results. It demonstrated how CODECS concepts can be translated into practical approaches for designing, monitoring, and evaluating digital innovation in local food systems.

As Europe continues to explore pathways towards more sustainable and resilient food systems, the discussions in Kraków highlighted a simple but powerful conclusion: the future of local food markets will not be determined by the number of digital tools they adopt, but by how effectively those tools help people, organisations, and communities work together. That is the real promise of sustainable digitalisation, and the central message that CODECS brought to Kraków.

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For more on Sustainable Digitalisation

Soma, K., Brunori, G., Giagnocavo, C., Meulman, F., Ryan, M., Heredia Hortigüela, R. M., Iliopoulos, C., Paulus, M., Ferrari, A., Kilis, E., Grando, S., Bellon-Maurel, V., Knierim, A., Gobrecht, A., Selnes, T., Ortolani, L., Bacco, M., & Mannari, C. (2026). Sustainable digitalisation - a system thinking approach for determining costs and benefits in the agri-sector. Agricultural Systems, 231, Article 104529. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2025.104529