Increasingly strong social movements built upon concrete experiences as organic market gardening microfarms to promote alternative food systems. These microfarms share some main characteristics: cultivated acreage smaller than official recommendations for market gardening set up; marketing in short distribution chains; high diversity of cultivated plants; low level of motorization and investment, agroecological practices. The study of 12 French microfarms, based on semi-structured interviews and cross-disciplinary analysis, pointed that alternative microfarms stands upon the access to immaterial or material resources, available in their social environment. Involvement in the community is thus a necessity, and at the same time the way to concretize ecological and social aspirations which are essential in the farmers' projects. Because they hardly take into account these kinds of no-merchant inputs, classical techno-economic frameworks are thus not adapted to analyze and assess their strategic choices. A larger conceptual framework, nourished by the inputs of concepts as multifunctionality of agriculture, ecosystems services, "double" sustainability seems indispensable in this purpose.