Farm to Table: Understanding Collaboration and Information Practices among Stakeholders in the Process of Produce Production, Sales, and Consumption

Abstract

Collaboration comes in many forms. How relevant stakeholders collaborate at the scale of a system deserves scholarly attention because their practices may differ from traditional teams like dyads or small groups. This study investigates how stakeholders of a local produce supply-and-demand system, namely experts, farmers, sellers, and consumers, in Taiwan collaborate and communicate for information as a case to illustrate how they depend on one another for information collaboration in the system. Using qualitative in-depth interview, we found that stakeholders had diverse collaboration goals within the system and encountered challenges in acquiring information from one another. In addition to establishing a holistic understanding of stakeholders' individual and collective practices in the system of produce supply-and-demand, we propose several design suggestions to address the needs and challenges we identified.