From Local Food Markets to SFSC Advisory Systems

COREnet European Roadshow in Kraków

The COREnet European Roadshow in Kraków (13-14 May 2026) focused not only on analysing digitalisation in relation to growing local food markets based on short food supply chains (SFSC), but on understanding better how short food supply chains (SFSCs) actually function in practice in Krakow — and what this means for advising systems. Through visits to Unitarg market, a working farm, and discussions with City of Kraków staff, participants were able to look beyond tools and platforms and examine the real organisational conditions under which local food systems operate.

What quickly became clear is that the challenge identified in the conference part of the European Roadshow — lack of coordination — has direct implications for how advisory systems need to evolve. SFSCs are not failing because farmers lack knowledge or technology. They fail because they lack continuous, operational support for coordination, logistics, and market organisation.

Markets as living advisory environments

The visit to Unitarg demonstrated that physical markets are not just places of exchange, but spaces where knowledge, trust, and relationships are built in practice. Participants recognised that these markets function as informal advisory environments, where producers and consumers interact directly, exchange information, and learn from each other.

As one reflection captured: “It’s not only about buying food… it’s also about meeting people, talking, discovering things.” 

This insight is important for COREnet: advisory in SFSCs does not take place only through formal channels. It is embedded in relationships, experience, and repeated interaction. Any future advisory system must therefore recognise and support these relational spaces, rather than operate separately from them.

At the same time, not all markets function equally well. Some thrive, while others struggle to attract producers and customers. This highlights a key gap in Kraków: there is no structured support system to help local markets evolve, adapt, and connect to wider food system processes.

The farmer as the centre — and the limit — of the system

The visit to Eliza Rusek’s farm, which is one of 20 farms that collaborate in the Marchewka Mobilna on-line market place shows that SFSCs increasingly rely on farmers not only as producers, but as organisers, logisticians, marketers, and coordinators. For small farmers like Eliza, collaboration is the key to saving time, reducing costs and increasing sales.

As participants observed: “When you see how much work is behind it… you understand why it is difficult for farmers to do everything.” 

This has direct implications for advising. Traditional advisory systems focus on production and compliance. However, SFSCs require support across the farm to fork value chain: coordination, logistics, customer relations, digital tools, system participation.

In practice, much of this support is already being provided — but informally — by peers, organisers, platform developers, and local initiatives. This reveals a structural gap: existing public advisory systems appear not designed to support the operational reality of individual farms and groups of farms operating as SFSCs.

The Marchewka Mobilna and its peer local food markets networked through APPETIT highlight a different model of advisory in action based on peer learning and mutual support.  Rather than providing one-off advice, the network support farmers in real-time decision-making, facilitates coordination between multiple actors, combine digital tools with organisational support and most importantly enables peer-to-peer learning across locations among both farmers and local food market organisers. This model signals a shift from advisory as knowledge transfer to advisory as coordination infrastructure.

Participants repeatedly pointed to this need: “We are talking a lot about connecting, but someone has to do the work of connecting.”  This “work of connecting” is precisely what future SFSC advisory systems must address. It includes roles such as coordinators and facilitators, logistics organisers, digital platform integrators, knowledge brokers.

Rather than eliminating intermediaries, SFSCs require a rethinking of intermediaries as shared services embedded in the food system.

The emerging role of local government

The City of Kraków approach is based on a recognition that scaling SFSCs cannot rely solely on market actors or farmers. By including food security, sustainability and sovereignty priorities in the proposed Krakow Development Strategy to 2050, the City has recognised that local government must play a catalytic and coordinating role.

Food systems cut across departments and policy areas, as well as jurisdictions outside city boundaries. Typically they are fragmented and there is no-one to take on the coordinating function. A Kraków Action Plan has been developed under the Interreg Cofarm4cities project and is the basis for developing and implementing food policy and programming as the largest population centre in the Małopolska region. Kraków is to:

• act as a system coordinator, convening actors and building relationships, including farmers and food producers as partners.

• support infrastructure development, especially for logistics and markets as both physical and relational.

• align policies across sectors (procurement, planning, education)

• enable data and knowledge flows across the system

• support experimentation and innovation through pilots.

The role is not about control, but about convening or enabling the system to function coherently.

The implication for SFSC advising is that advisory systems are functioning—but they are fragmented. Public advisory supports compliance, funding and formal requirements. Meanwhile, operational advice comes from peers, market organisers, digital platforms and informal networks.

The challenge is not to expand one or the other, but to integrate them into a coherent system. Herein lies the role of local government – enabling hybrid and self-organising advisory ecosystems, which combine public and private actors, provide continuous, real-time support, focus on system-level coordination, recognise advisory as an operational function.

A new vision for SFSC advising

The deep dive in Krakow’s food system suggests that advising for SFSCs must evolve in three key ways.

First, it must move from episodic advice to continuous support, reflecting the dynamic nature of local food systems. Second, it must extend beyond production to cover logistics, coordination, and market organisation. Third, it must operate at the level of the system, not just the individual farm, supporting relationships and collective action. This is where the City of Krakow with its convening power comes into the picture.

In line with COREnet’s ambition to build a European Advisory Network for SFSCs, it is important to ask: what kind of advisory is needed to scale local food markets?

The answer from Krakow is not more advice in the traditional sense. It is a different kind of advisory altogether. This is because SFSCs do not primarily need more technical expertise, more training programmes, and more isolated and time-bound projects They need coordination, facilitation, system organisation and continuous support.

Meeting the scaling challenge means SFSC advising must become something new: a form of system infrastructure. Kraków shows that the foundations are already in place—in markets, farms, and emerging initiatives. The task ahead is to connect these elements through advisory systems that are capable of operating as self-organising and self-renewing organisational ecosystems.

And in that process, local government has a critical role—not as a regulator or operator, but as a catalyst or convenor for coordination and system coherence.

To learn more download the COREnet Field visit report HERE. 

A briefing on Krakow’s Development Strategy is HERE and a summary of the Krakow Action Plan is HERE.

You can find the full Krakow Action Plan as developed under the Cofarm4Cities project HERE.

A critique of the Krakow Action Plan from an SFSC perspective is HERE.