Can We Be More Collaborative? Top-Down Policies and Urban–Rural Divides in the Ecological Agriculture Sector in Nanjing, China

Embeddedness has long been used to study collaborations and tensions between food initiatives, but less attention has been paid to this topic in both the vertical and formal contexts of governmental systems and the horizontal and vernacular contexts of local culture. Such interrogations are essential for understanding the challenges for advancing food initiatives. This study uses the case of ecological agriculture in Nanjing, China to investigate the vertical embeddedness shaped by policy networks and horizontal embeddedness carved into local social configurations. We conclude that strong government supports facilitated large-scale modern ecological agriculture enterprises, at the expense of small-scale ecological farms. Furthermore, the tensions between new farmers and local farmers attributed to the broad urban-rural divide also impede recently established ecological farm operations. Strategies are needed to address these social divides between ecological farms in order for them to be collaborative in China and in other similar social-political settings.