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Stofer et al.  Advancements in Agricultural Development 
  Volume 3, Issue 1, 2022 
  agdevresearch.org 

1. Kathryn Stofer, Research Associate Professor, STEM Education and Outreach, University of Florida, PO Box 110540 

University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, stofer@ufl.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3659-490X  
2. James C. Fulton, Graduate Research Assistant, University of Florida, pcvgt@ufl.edu 
3. Heather R. Nesbitt, Graduate Research Assistant, University of Florida, PO Box 110540 University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 

32611, Heather.nesbitt@ufl.edu,   https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5339-8516 
4. Anna Prizzia, Academic Program Specialist; Program Director and Campus Food Systems Coordinator, University of Florida, 

aprizzia@ufl.edu,  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3028-4062 
5. Karen A. Garrett, Preeminent Professor, University of Florida, karengarrett@ufl.edu, 

  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6578-1616  
6. Jhon Jarome Rosario, Undergraduate Research Assistant, University of Florida, jhonrosario@ufl.edu, 

 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7619-7909 
4 

 

Initial Social Network Analysis of Producers Working Towards 
Sustainability Suggests Weak Ties and Potential 

Fragmentation 
 

K. Stofer1, J. Fulton2, H. Nesbitt3, A. Prizzia4, K. Garrett5, J. Rosario6 

  

Abstract 

For farmers to adopt and maintain sustainable farming practices, they must have the resources and 
network to succeed with this work and must realize a positive impact on their business model. As a 
food system is ultimately made up of the people, organizations, and institutions that grow, move, 
buy and sell food, we must understand who is at the center of this network, who is well-connected, 
and who is peripheral. Within a particular regional food system in a highly productive southeastern 
U.S. state, the network of local producers interested in sustainable production, including 
environmental and economic components, seems to be growing. However, it is unclear who benefits 
from this system and whether this system is growing in a way that encourages and enhances the 
benefits for sustainable agriculture. Existing evidence for the network size and its vulnerabilities has 
been anecdotal, from Extension agents and their contacts with individual producers, rather than 
based on systematic research. We used social network analysis to understand the status of the 
system and its constituents. Connections between producers appear to be weak overall with 
potential fragmentation, suggesting a fragility that could easily derail efforts to increase sustainable 
production in the region. 
 

Keywords 

regional food system, sustainable agriculture, sustainable production, resource sharing 



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Introduction and Problem Statement  
 

Sustainable agriculture (Gold, 2012) is key to feeding the 21st century’s growing population. 
Sustainability on a regional scale in turn is vital to global efforts. For producers to adopt and 
maintain sustainable practices, they must have necessary resources and realize a positive 
impact on their business model (Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education, 2010). 
Sustainable agriculture cannot move forward if the people in a regional food system, especially 
producers, are not talking to each other, working together, and sharing resources.  
 
Within a regional food system in a highly productive southeastern U.S. state, the network of 
producers interested in sustainable production seems to be growing. Sustainability is of 
particular importance to diversifying agricultural and rural communities who have a growing 
interest in local food (Gorham et al., 2015) and direct market channels. In our region, most 
producers still sell through brokers and focus on national and multi-national markets. Despite a 
trend toward larger farms, in our state, 90% of farms are considered small, with up to $250,000 
in annual sales (Small Farms and Alternative Enterprises, n.d.).  
 
At the same time, consumer demand for local food is increasing (Giovannucci et al., 2010), 
though definitions of local may vary and include regional and state areas (Adams & Salois, 2010; 
Aprile et al., 2016; Giovannucci et al., 2010; Martinez, 2010). Direct to consumer sales and 
marketing primarily happens from smaller operations; demand for these buying options is also 
increasing as consumers seek to support producers close to home (Martinez, 2010). However, 
small local producers face challenges to supplying local markets, some of which can be 
overcome by pooling resources (Martinez, 2010) through cooperation in a regional network. 
Therefore, we must understand the current status of the system of available and well-used 
human and organizational resources to frame future support and research for our regional 
network.  
 

Theoretical and Conceptual Framework  
 
Previous evidence for the size and strength of the network has been anecdotal from Extension 
agents rather than based on systematic research. To provide effective and efficient clientele 
programs, we must understand who is well-connected, what producers ask of others in the 
network, and who may not be in the network (Doerfert, 2011). Therefore, we used social 
network analysis (Christensen & O’Sullivan, 2015; Scott & Carrington, 2011) as a framework as 
part of a larger study to support flow of sustainable agricultural practices throughout our 
producer network of Extension clientele (Kumar Chaudhary & Warner, 2015). This study 
represents the first step in gathering information about central players in the network through 
focus groups in order to perform a full social network analysis (Zack, 2000). Ultimately we want 
to promote diffusion of sustainable agricultural practices throughout the network (Rogers, 
2003).  
 



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Developing land for human habitation reduces land for production (Lubell et al., 2014). The 
pressures of increased yield per acre may lead to environmental degradation, countering 
efforts to continue land’s productivity (Cassman, 1999; Tilman et al., 2002, 2011). Smaller 
producers in particular struggle against shrinking profit margins (Bunge, 2017; United States 
Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, 2018), making costly improvements and 
investments in measures to move toward environmental sustainability or income diversification 
(Meert et al., 2005) more and more precarious if not altogether out of reach.   
 
Food systems are social structures comprised of a connected network of people, such as 
producers and organizations (Brass et al., 2004). Producers are one part of the larger U.S. and 
global food system. We use the food system definition of Goetz (2016), “the networked set of 
input suppliers, farmers, processors, distributors, and consumers” (p. 420), although for the 
purposes of this paper we ignore the rules that make the system work. Producers in previous 
modern food systems models (1986) only interact with processors, and consumers buy only 
from food service firms or grocery retailers and wholesalers (Goetz, 2016). Today, that model is 
more complicated. Examining regional networks for their self-reliance and ability to provide for 
their local residents has become paramount as production has also become increasingly 
geographically concentrated (Griffin et al., 2015). Social network analysis has shown how 
networks promote sustainability in regional agroecological systems by supporting social ties 
and allowing for diffusion of innovations (Levy & Lubell, 2018; Lubell et al., 2014). Previous 
social network analysis for agricultural groups has often focused on a single crop (Levy & Lubell, 
2018). Egocentric network analysis in particular can be used to study diffusion of information as 
well as identify the most important sources of information (Haythornthwaite, 1996).  
 
When we know the structure of a communication network, we can consider implications of 
structure for outcomes such as sustainability. We can identify which nodes may play 
particularly important roles in the system. When there are problems, such as the need for 
sustainable disease management, specific nodes may be key to sampling and mitigation 
because of their role in communication networks and/or their role in epidemic networks 
(Andersen et al., 2019; Buddenhagen et al., 2017). Particular knowledge brokers may play key 
roles within networks (Cvitanovic et al., 2017) and in linking networks to other aspects of the 
environment (Klerkx et al., 2010). People with strong network links for access to information 
have been associated with transformational change (Dowd et al., 2014). In the context of 
improving the well-being of agricultural regions, understanding which people are not well 
served by networks of communication or technology spread can support the design of better 
systems (Garrett et al., 2018; Henry & Vollan, 2014). Network structure may determine 
whether producers are exposed needed information (Xu et al., 2018) and convinced to make 
changes to practices. 
 

Purpose  
 
The first objective of this study was to describe the network of self-selected sustainable or 
emerging sustainable producers in the region to determine a baseline for strengthening the 



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network. Our second objective was to determine how often producers sought particular 
assistance on sustainability and from whom. Therefore, we had the following research 
questions: 
1. What are the self-identified characteristics of producers and sustainable and emerging 

sustainable operations in the region? 
2. What are the current number and strengths of relationships in the region among self-

reported sustainable or emerging sustainable producers and supporting organizations? 
3. What is the relationship of self-reported level of sustainability and network centrality? 
 

Methods  
 
We defined our regional network as encompassing 17 counties in the northeastern portion of 
an agriculturally intensive U.S. state. The region included one major metropolitan area and one 
regional metropolitan area, home to a land-grant university. Each county in the region has a 
staffed Extension office associated with the university. We recruited survey participants from 
those counties through Extension agents identified by Prizzia, who is both a program director in 
the university’s college of agriculture as well as a community activist in local food systems. We 
asked those key Extension figures to distribute the survey to their local producer contacts. 
Additionally, we emailed a recruitment list developed in a related study of sustainable 
producers in the region (Stofer et. al., 2021) and collected emails from producers at local 
farmer’s markets in early 2016. We encouraged all participants to share the survey with other 
producers not on the direct email lists to use snowball sampling. We limited participation to 
people at least 18 and offered a nominal monetary incentive to every 25th survey participant.  
 
We asked two focus groups of purposively recruited sustainable producers in two metropolitan 
areas in our region to identify the key contacts on sustainable production in our region (Stofer 
et. al., 2021). The survey for all aspiring or sustainable producers in the region asked about 
which human or organizational resources in the network they use and with whom they 
collaborate most often (Scott & Carrington, 2011; Zack, 2000). We listed personnel identified as 
key contacts by the focus group participants as explicit choices for contact in the survey. In 
addition, participants could write-in other contacts they consulted about sustainable 
production within the last two years. After identifying individuals with whom they had contact, 
we asked participants to indicate which county offices of Extension and any other outside 
groups they had contacted about sustainability in the past two years. For each contact 
indicated, we asked participants about the topic and frequency of the consultation(s): 
frequently (multiple times monthly), semi-frequently (multiple times annually) or emergency 
only (once or twice annually).  
 
We also asked for basic demographic information; self-identified level of production from 
considering sustainability, to partly sustainable, to almost totally sustainable; county or 
counties of operation and products sales; approximate annual gross sales; how their operation 
sells; the type of products their operation sells; and how long their operation has been in the 



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region. See Supplemental Material at https://bit.ly/3q4pSNm  for full survey questions and 
choices.  
 
We hosted the survey in Qualtrics and sent invitations via three emails in Summer 2016, one 
initial email and two reminder emails (Dillman et al., 2009). We checked data points and 
included respondents who gave consent and provided a name. In some cases, when we asked 
about the level of communication with another person or organization, the respondent failed 
to list a communication frequency. In those cases, we imputed the frequency as emergency. 
While we knew some individuals were representatives of listed organizations, such as an 
Extension agent for a particular county, if respondents listed both the individual Extension 
agent and the county Extension office as separate contacts, then we maintained those ratings 
separately. If the county extension office was not listed but an individual Extension agent from 
that county had been, then we added the county extension office and gave it a frequency rating 
of emergency for those topics selected for the individual agent. We converted communication 
frequencies into numerical values, summed them, and aggregated them by topics of 
communication (e.g. animals, cultivation, tools). Fulton organized and imported survey data 
into the R programming environment and used igraph, maps, and dplyr packages for network 
structure analysis and scoring. We used ordinal logistic regression to analyze relationships 
between network centrality measures and self-reported sustainability levels, using MASS, 
ordinal, and erer R packages.1 
 

Findings 
 
Research Question 1 – Participant and Operation Characteristics 
There were 41 complete and usable survey responses, including four duplicates. Stofer 
reviewed the duplicated entries and found most were exact copies of the original responses. 
We collated cases where respondents provided additional information in a duplicate. No 
instances resulted in any conflicting information between original and subsequent responses. 
One additional respondent completed the information about their production and sales types 
and locations but neither communication partners nor individual demographics; we retained 
this participant in the network as an isolate. Therefore, we had a final total of 38 respondents. 
Our estimated response rate based on available data ranges from 4–100% (See Supplemental 
Material at https://bit.ly/3q4pSNm for response rate calculation). Prizzia’s involvement in the 
network leads her to believe our respondents were representative of the network at that time. 
 
Respondents varied in their age, ranging from 25–74; ethnicity, though most were White; and 
level of education, though most had either a bachelor’s or master’s degree, as shown in Table 
1. Thirty-one respondents were owner/operators, eight were managers, and two were 
employees, including two respondents who indicated they fulfilled all three roles. 
 
 

 
1 R packages are available at: https://iviagraph.org/r/,  



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Table 1 
 
Survey Respondent Demographics 

 
Production Demographics 
In their self-assessment, 15 participants listed their farms as having “at least some” production 
currently sustainable and 18 as having “virtually all” production sustainable. One respondent 
was in the process of becoming sustainable and two were considering sustainability,  
with one final participant not answering this question. However, some participants in each of 
these levels of sustainability were disconnected from other participants in the network, 
meaning that they did not list any contacts within the past two years related to sustainability. 
We had 11 isolates in the network who did not list any contacts; we discuss their role in the 
analysis further below. Seven isolates reported that their production was virtually all 
sustainable, three listed their production as at least somewhat sustainable, and one reported 
they were in the process of becoming sustainable. The final participant who did not list a level 
for the sustainability of their production also was an isolate. However, all these participants did 
complete demographics at the very end of the survey, suggesting they deliberately skipped 
these questions rather than exiting the survey without completing it. 
 
Most respondents reported under $250,000 gross annual sales2, with only two reporting 
$250,000–$500,000 and four reporting more than $500,000 annual gross. All but six reported 
selling at least some directly to consumers, and fourteen report selling at least some to 
wholesalers. Other ways producers sell their products include to restaurants, as on-site edible 
landscaping, through community-supported agriculture (CSA), via livestock markets, to other 
farmers, and through buying clubs. 

 
2 We defined sales categories deliberately broadly to preserve participant anonymity and encourage participation 
based on our knowledge of the producers in the region to categorize productions as small, medium, and large.  

Age Total Race/Ethnicity Total Level of education Total 
18–24 0 Asian/Pacific Islander 1 High school graduate, 

diploma or 
equivalent 

3 

25–34 5 Black/African American 1 Some college credit, 
no degree 

5 

35–44 6 Native American/ 
American Indian 

0 Trade/technical/ 
vocational training 

2 

45–54 6 Hispanic/ Latino 2 Associate’s degree 3 
55–64 15 White 28 Bachelor’s degree 9 
65–74 5 Other 1 Master’s degree 13 
75 or older 0 Multi-ethnic 1 Doctorate/ 

professional degree 
2 

No response 1 White-Hispanic 1 No response 1 
  No response 3   



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The vast majority of growers reported their operation base as located in either one of two 
North-Central Florida counties which contained the major metropolitan areas. Respondents 
also stated that the majority of their sales occurred in either of these two counties with limited 
sales in other counties throughout the state (Figure 1). 
 
Figure 1 
 
County of Production and Sales Locations Listed by Respondents 

 
Note. The county reported with the highest number of locations for both production (left) and 
sales (right) was Alachua county (n = 17 and 23, respectively). 
 
Research Questions 2 and 3 – Network Characterization 
Four groups comprise the overall network: producers, Extension, outside organizations, and 
non-producers. The summed communication frequencies and aggregated communication 
topics provide the network’s general model of communication among actors (See Figure 2).  
 
Figure 2 
 
Summed Network Diagram of Communication Among Actors 

 

Note. Shape size depicts number of actors per group. Line width indicates number of contacts.  
 



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Most of the identified network was of either producers or Extension entities, including both 
Extension offices (counties) and individual Extension agents named. Participants reported the 
largest number of communication links between Extension and producers. Producers also 
reported relationships with the three other groups, and each group except non-producers 
reported relationships within their own group, shown as self-loops in Figure 2. Table 2 shows 
network centrality indicators per group. Given the ego-centric nature, producers were the 
center of the network with the highest centrality indicators, and the other groups had low 
levels of centrality. People who acted as bridges were primarily individual producers. In the 
disaggregated network, it was apparent that there was significant network structure, with most 
producers connected to other individuals/entities. However, several producers were apparently 
isolated (see Figure 3). Approximately five percent of the total number of possible links 
between entities were present in the complete network (see Figure 4).  
 
Figure 3 
 
Complete Disaggregated Network with Isolates  

   

Table 2 
 
Centrality measurements for aggregated participant groups 
Participant group Degree Closeness Betweenness Eigenvector 
Producer 5 .33 3 1.00 
Organization 3 .20 0 0.62 
Non-producer 1 .20 0 0.38 
Extension 3 .20 0 0.62 
Note. This information is most complete for producers, who were the primary 
respondents to the survey. 



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Figure 4 
 
Network Density of Complete and Individual Networks

 
 
The sub-networks based on production types and information requests were significantly less 
integrated than the overall network, with approximately 0.5 percent of links present on average 
(see Figure 5).  
 
Figure 5 
 
Individual Sub-Networks Based on Topics of Sustainability Conversation  

 



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The sub-networks were similar with edge density ranging from 0.002 to 0.01 as shown below in 
Table 3. Interestingly, the sustainability sub-network, regarding contacts with others about 
sustainability issues, appeared to have more network structure with a few important central 
entities. We found only weak evidence for a correlation between centrality and self-reported 
sustainability (p < 0.2) as shown in Supplemental Figure 11a-d at https://bit.ly/3q4pSNm. 
 
Table 3 
 
Characteristics for the Complete Network Based on Communication About at Least One Topic, 
and for Sub-networks Based on Communication About Individual Topics 

 
Conclusions, Discussion, and Recommendations 

 
We set out to describe the communication network of potentially sustainable producers in our 
regional food system and its implications for regional sustainability. Our producers show some 
diversity in their production schemes, particularly in the ways they sell beyond directly to 
consumers. By and large, they manage small operations with limited annual sales, and only 
about half of the respondents consider their operations nearly completely sustainable. While 
the respondents report a variety of educational backgrounds, they are also otherwise older and 
of primarily White race and ethnicity. This is similar to the racial/ethnic makeup of the region 
overall and the age range of producers more broadly. The age of the group could mean that 
their knowledge could be lost as these producers retire or pass away. Our regional producers 
seem to be highly reliant on one-on-one interactions with other producers that they know. 
They do rely on Cooperative Extension, similar to other producer groups (Silvert et al., 2021) 
but again, may be working with particular individuals in Extension more so than the service as a 

 

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Edges 151 61 66 27 25 31 23 37 45 10 
Density 0.020 0.010 0.010 0.004 0.004 0.005 0.004 0.010 0.010 0.002 
Average node 
degree 

2.700 1.100 1.180 0.480 0.450 0.550 0.410 0.660 0.800 0.180 

Diameter 8 9 11 6 6 8 8 5 9 2 
Transitivity 0.05 0.05 0 0 0.17 0 0 0 0 0 
Average 
betweenness 

91.72 17.60 53.00 6.05 1.27 9.67 3.76 1.45 11.30 0.08 

Average 
closeness 

0.0002 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 

Note. Number of entities for all networks is 112. 



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whole. Reliance on particular personnel could add to the fragility of the network and potential 
knowledge loss due to retirement or job changes. Sub-networks based on particular products or 
topics, particularly finances, have room for strengthening. 
  
A large percentage of isolates also indicates fragility of the network. However, the isolates are 
not completely disconnected from the network, as they received the survey through 
participation with local Extension offices, other producers or organizations, or through sales at 
farmer’s markets. They may not be taking advantage of the resources the network has to offer 
particularly on sustainability, as evidenced by their failure to list communication about 
sustainability with the network members within the previous two years. 
  
The reported networks for some topics and individuals appear substantially better developed 
than others. The analysis of a relationship between a person’s role in the network and their 
reported farm sustainability was inconclusive, but weak evidence suggests that producers do 
not necessarily need to communicate with others in the region to consider themselves 
sustainable. Understanding and supporting people who both implement sustainable practices 
and have important roles in the communication networks (Cvitanovic et al., 2017; Klerkx et al., 
2010) could support sustainability efforts. If people in networks tend to be linked with others 
similar to themselves, the resulting segregation can pose challenges for system-wide 
improvements to sustainability (Barnes et al., 2016). Our study helps understand the regional 
system, including how to better integrate those underserved by the network and necessary 
rates of adoption of sustainable production for regional sustainability (Garrett et al., 2018; 
Henry & Vollan, 2014). Sharing these gaps in the network and resource base with service 
providers can enhance their support for sustainable agriculture (Christensen & O’Sullivan, 
2015).  
 
This research faces some typical limitations. We did not have a complete picture of the network 
to begin with and could not define the boundaries. Producers may have received our survey but 
been reluctant to participate and disclose their name (Penuel et al., 2006). Finally, while we 
attempted to attend farmer’s markets and reach people not already connected to Extension, 
we may have not adequately reached or sampled those producers.  
 
Future research will involve conducting follow-up social network analysis over time as Extension 
and other groups continue to connect producers in the region. Re-design of our survey will also 
allow us to probe the directionality of the network, that is, do some producers serve primarily 
as purveyors of knowledge and less as recipients, or are members of the network sharing more 
equally? Future studies could ask in more detail about the frequency of contacts with other 
producers and organizations. 
 
We highlight an existing repository of knowledge of sustainability amongst our responding 
producers and Extension and other local organizations. Specifically, those producers that also 
attended our focus groups are already implementing a number of sustainable practices and 
may be able to serve as resources for other producers interested in implementing these 



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practices (Stofer et al., 2021). However, the network amongst these various entities with such 
knowledge seems highly fragile and susceptible to breakdown and knowledge loss. 
 

Acknowledgements 
 
We thank our producers for their time in participating in the study as well as for their 
contributions to our food system. 

 
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