M.D. Lytras et al. (Eds.): WSKS 2010, Part II, CCIS 112, pp. 319–325, 2010. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010 A Collaborative Network Model for Agrifood Transactions on Regional Base Antonio P. Volpentesta and Salvatore Ammirato Department of Electronics, Computer Science and Systems, University of Calabria via P. Bucci, 42\C, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy {volpentesta,ammirato}@deis.unical.it Abstract. The paper deals with a collaborative agrifood network in a regional scenario where producers of high typical and quality goods and consumer groups are involved in agrifood transactions as well as information and knowl- edge exchanges through an e-business platform. While producers are engaged in providing consumers with useful and timely information about healthiness, environmentally friendliness and most importantly, food quality of their prod- ucts, consumers are engaged in giving prompt and understandable feedbacks to the producers. In this sense, the network is a form of proactive learning com- munity. Starting from some basic socio-economic assumptions on a reference territory, we present an organizational model that can be adopted to foster the development of the regional area where it is applied. An instantiation of the model for a selected territory (the District of High Quality Productions in Si- bari, Calabria, Italy) and first results, coming from two pilot tests, have been summarized as well. Keywords: Collaborative Network, Regional Alternative Agrifood Network, Learning Communities, E-Business, Sustainable change. 1 Introduction Over recent years, the European agribusiness sector has been facing new challenges due to deregulation and globalisation of the markets, increased customer quality re- quirements in agrifood products and the development of new technologies. Besides, the increasing pressure on producer prices, that is resulting above all from the grow- ing power of retailers, is aggravated further by the general decline of policy support (Knickel et al., 2008). Both trends, together with the increasing consumer demands for safe, healthy and ethically correct food and an attractive countryside, drive agrifood producers to search for new ways of doing business able to guarantee competitive advantages, to improve farm revenue streams and to develop new consumer market niches. Different studies (Bowler et al, 1996) show that ways to realise agribusinesses’ expectations consist in operating on: agrifood products, setting them with high “typical and quality” features (i.e. strictly related with local territory); production/distribution processes, making the long and complex agrifood supply chains shorter; technological platforms, supporting adequate e-business solutions for SMEs (European Commission, 2007).