Modeling inclusive food supply chains toward sustainable ecosystem planning

doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-813411-5.00001-6

Sustainable Food Supply Chains

Planning, Design, and Control through Interdisciplinary Methodologies

2019, Pages 1-21

https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-813411-5.00001-6 Get rights and content

Abstract

The increasing global food demand is forcing the food industry to identify new effective strategies for production and distribution, as was already experienced in the 1960s and 1970s with the birth of green chemistry and the explosion of fossil-fueled agriculture.

The globalization of the food trade has bridged the barriers between production and consumption without respecting the balance of natural resources, resulting in enlarged gaps between developed and developing countries. In the food sector many issues affect the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and social. These include land-use change and deforestation to widen farms, pastures, and biofuel cultivations, land grabbing to establish intensive agriculture, clean water consumption, soil and air pollution, lack of supply chain infrastructures, volatile prices, and climate change. Together these issues make current food supply chains (FSCs) unsustainable over the long term and challenge the future of the food industries and society as well. Such issues also reveal the lack of connections and coordination among actors involved in FSCs and open debate about the neglected role of the physical and logistic/distribution infrastructures in addressing long-term sustainability targets.

This chapter illustrates a hierarchical framework aimed at modeling production and distribution food ecosystems through a set of interdisciplinary parameters and decision variables. The decision levers identified in this framework describe how the food ecosystem behaves according to an input-output flow analysis. The framework formulates a set of planning decision problems via mixed linear programming. The definition of the inclusive food ecosystem inspires collecting multidisciplinary parameters that impose collaboration between decision-makers. Furthermore, as part of the ecosystem, logistics and distribution processes are involved in the planning issues beyond the common perception that sees an FSC as a sequence of independent stages.

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Cited by (8)

Assessing energy requirements in the European (EU-28) food sector
2023, Sustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies
Food products need to be farmed, harvested, transported, processed, distributed, and cooked. Each of these steps causes environmental emissions and requires a certain amount of energy. Eurostat data highlight that agriculture/farming and processing are the most energy-intensive stages along food supply chains (FSC). Further, energy consumption is strongly affected by the type of food product, e.g., meat, dairy, fruit, vegetables, etc. Starting from this background, this chapter aims to collect, analyze, and compare food and energy consumption data in the context of the European Union (EU-28) related to 2010 and 2019, categorizing them by product food type and by stage along the FSC, i.e., agriculture, processing, logistics, packaging, use, and end-of-life. Considering the EU-28 data per capita, the analysis proves that the items characterized by a wide increase in consumption from 2010 to 2019 are pig meat (from 41 kg to 109 kg), cheese (from 17 kg to 37 kg), and water (from 106 L to 125 L). Furthermore, the study reveals that the most energy-intensive items are coffee (232 MJ/kg) and butter (83 MJ/kg), but in relation to annual consumption, the most energy-intensive process is pig meat (2080 PJ/year) and cheese (1502 PJ/year) processing. Finally, the analysis confirms that agriculture and processing cover 34% and 24% of energy consumption, respectively, followed by use, packaging, logistics, and end-of-life. About the energy sources, despite the use of renewables has constantly increased since 2000, up to 15% in 2019, the main part of EU-28 gross available energy, i.e., about 70% in 2019 is still provided by fossil fuels. This chapter addresses the mapping of the energy situation in FSCs in Europe and, highlights the most energy-intensive stages and food items that aim to support pathways toward sustainable development in the food ecosystems.
Sustainable development of food supply chains toward food security managing and reducing losses
2023, Sustainable Development and Pathways for Food Ecosystems: Integration and Synergies
Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc, the debate about how food security can be ensured despite disruptions and global issues (e.g., climate change) intensify. Food security challenges are escalating as demand for foods continuously rises while the majority of resources are put into containing the pandemic. Food loss and waste (FLW) is a problem that has received considerable attention from scholars for a long time. It becomes a moral issue as at the same time some people are struggling with hunger, and a huge amount of edible for-consumption foods are wasted globally. The FLW also has economic implications since assets that have been invested in foods result in no return as many of them disappear along with the waste. Moreover, GHG emissions because of food processing activities become one of the environment's critical issues. The FLW occurs along the food supply chain (FSC) stages, therefore, efforts for reducing it should involve all players within the FSCs network. The integration and coordination among actors while managing foods flow across the FSCs could be one of the important strategies for FLW reduction. Continuously improving the collaborative approach by involving more participants (including consumers) may lead to a more sustainable FSC.
Drivers and barriers in sustainable supply chains: The case of the Brazilian coffee industry
2022, Sustainable Production and Consumption
Citation Excerpt :
Food operations involve production, packaging, storage, and logistics, like any other product, and the physical distance between the growing areas and the final consumer is proportional to the number of steps and actors involved along the supply chain (Accorsi et al., 2019). In the food industry, in order for a food supply chain (FSC) to become sustainable, the distribution networks need to guarantee the integrity of the food ecosystem, such as the fair use of natural resources, reduction of environmental impacts, and consideration of macro-environmental variables (economic, environmental, and social) (Accorsi et al., 2019). The explanation for the growing demand for food production in the context of socio-environmental responsibility can be summarised in a few main points, such as the considerable increase in food standards requirements, the industrialisation of agricultural products, the government's concerns about food safety, as well as the rise of globalisation and the growth of the world population (Mangla et al., 2018).
Despite the growing interest in sustainable practices, many organisations in the agro-food industry are currently struggling to implement sustainable supply chain (SSC) innovations. This research addresses this gap by studying the Brazilian coffee industry, which is considered not only an important commodity for the Brazilian economy, but also for the global market. To achieve the goals of this study, a bibliometric assessment of the literature was carried out to understand the drivers and barriers of SSCs, and based on the findings, a survey was conducted with a set of Brazilian coffee stakeholders, obtaining a total of 147 complete answers. The results suggest that the main drivers involved in sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) of the Brazilian coffee industry are social responsibility, economic performance/improvement, regulations (environmental, regional, international), and the adoption of an innovative business model. On the other hand, the barriers identified are the lack of government support, the high complexity of the processes and communication gaps. It is expected that the results of this study can contribute to the SSC literature and reduce the blind spots of decision-makers to prioritise actions and understand better how to overcome the barriers and take advantage of the drivers towards more SSCs in the industry. Limitations and future research opportunities are also addressed.
Sustainable agrifood supply chains: Bibliometric, network and content analyses
2022, Science of the Total Environment
Citation Excerpt :
The increasing global food demand is forcing the agrifood sector to identify effective new strategies for production, distribution, and consumption. In the last decade, agrifood production has grown exponentially to satisfy new markets like India and China (Accorsi et al., 2019). By 2050, the global food demand will have doubled, also due to an even larger consumption of animal food (Koning and van Ittersum, 2009) resulting from changing dietary habits.
Nowadays the agrifood system requires major transformations aimed at promoting sustainability, reducing waste and stimulating a change toward healthy sustainable diets. The scientific literature on the transition to sustainable food models continues to develop rapidly and there is an urgent need to systematize its knowledge structure and thus make future research more vigorous. Recently, several studies have focused on certain aspects of supply chain, such as traceability or decision-making frameworks, but a systematic review of the role of sustainability within the agrifood supply has never been carried out. Through a bibliometric analysis combined with network and content analyses, the present study is aimed at identifying homogeneous areas in the field of agrifood supply chains, investigating the role of innovation technology in the transition to sustainability. The bibliometric results showed that sustainable agrifood supply chains are experiencing an evolving positive trend and represent a challenging research topic which is capturing the attention of scholars. From the network and overlay visualization of keyword co-occurrences four different research clusters were identified and the blockchain emerged as central topic in the field of food security and safety. The content analysis highlighted greater attention to the environmental pillar, compared to the economic and social pillars of the sustainability paradigm. A lack of studies was also observed on the post-consumption phase of the agrifood supply chain, which could represent a research gap to be fulfilled in the light of circular economy.
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Chapter 1 - Modeling inclusive food supply chains toward sustainable ecosystem planning

Abstract