Food System Dynamics (E-Journals)
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An Assessment of the Food Companies Sustainability Policies through a Greenwashing Indicator
Get PDFThere is an increasing interest in green marketing as a powerful tool to enhance the agrifood companies’ reputation and competitiveness; this makes it necessary to provide tools, for the consumers and the other stakeholders in the food system, able to detect the presence of distorted or false information often defined as greenwashing. It is also important for the agrifood companies to be able to prevent their communication to be unintentionally perceived as greenwashing, thus fully exploiting the value added provided by an effective communication of their sustainability policies.The goal of this paper is to provide a monitoring tool able to support the food companies definition of effective green marketing strategies, avoiding the risk of greenwashing; moreover supporting the other food system stakeholders’ critical analysis of the sustainability communication coming from the food companies.To this end a list of indicators coming from different organizations (Greenpeace, EnviroMedia Social Marketing and Oregon University, Terrachoice, Futerra) and authors (J.Grant, 2009) have been chosen and integrated in order to cover a broad range of sustainability dimensions and communication suggestions finalised to avoiding greenwashing in the agrifood sector.The level of correctness and relevance of the companies communication as been assessed by measuring the number of actions described in the food companies’ Sustainability Report, falling within the indicators belonging to the different categories of green marketing and greenwashing.The indicators have been tested on a large Italian food company: Barilla, by considering its Sustainability Report for the year 2016.The results showed that the sustainability actions related to possible greenwashing represent a relatively low share of the total action implemented by Barilla. Most interesting is the capacity of this analytical tool to encompass a broad range of dimensions related to the companies green marketing strategies evaluation; this allows also other stakeholders to more clearly analyse the capacity of a company to provide a clear honest and complete report on their sustainability activities.Further studies should weigh the different green marketing and greenwashing indicators in order to appreciate their relevance in contributing to the overall level of correct communication.A sample of representative food chain stakeholders should be involved in providing an expert evaluation
FOODLAB Business Tool to Foster Entrepreneurship in the Agrifood Sector
Get PDFThe FOODLAB project develop a project-based learning approach and an entrepreneurial spirit in students, foster interactions between stakeholders in Food innovation and guide the development of innovative projects for Ecotrophelia, the European competition on food innovation that bring hundreds of students to compete at European level with their idea. The FOODLAB project enable the setting up of a European Foodbusiness Transfer Laboratory to create/help future entrepreneurs, with dedicated modules to promote interactions with food companies, technical centres, research centres or business companies.In FOODLAB project is we reach the aim to provide an innovative tools to help to build business models, business plans to serve students, high education institutions, and SMEs.The tool built for this purpose is a client server application, highly customizable to follow the target needs. It allows to setup a complete business model and business plan providing template, defaults sentences, available example of business plan. The tool incorporate in a customizable template and related information to built-in high quality business plans, and provide kind of expert knowledge base for those who need a business plan or document to promote their idea or agrifood product for development.The tool was validated with success by a team of students that participate to Ecotrophelia Italy 2016. Training modules and guidelines are also available to facilitate the use of the tool.The tool can be used by students of High Education Institution, or workers and managers for training by also for business model and business plan implementation.The tool showed a great potential to develop of targeted, standard business models and business plans that could be transferable to other domains or tailored to a specific type of product or food innovation
Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Climate-Friendly Food in European Countries
Get PDFSince food consumption contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions it is important field of action for consumer engagement. In this context, the present article looks into the question if carbon footprint labels are a suitable mean to foster climate-friendly food purchase behavior. By means of a mixed methods approach comprising choice experiments and qualitative face-to-face interviews European consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for carbon footprint labels compared to other sustainability labels as well as socio-psychological barriers for climate-friendly consumption are explored. The results reveal that consumers are prepared to pay a price premium for carbon footprint labels but that label skepticism and fatigue as well as a lack in awareness about the impact of food production and consumption on climate change are major barriers for climate-friendly purchase behavior. Information provision in form of carbon footprint labels can only be one part of the solution. Political engagement and engagement by the retail are incremental for success
Integration of the Food Supply Chain as a Factor of Sustainable Development
Get PDFThe aim adopted in the paper was to lead the scientific reasoning on sustainable development in context of economic entities and its integration in the supply chain. It is to be noticed that integration of supply chain is one of the factor for using or limiting the functional weaknesses of the market which are related to the three sustainability aspects as environmental, social and economic resources, as assumes the concept of sustainability. In the paper, it was searched for the relationship between these three sustainability aspects and limitation of functional weaknesses of the market through integration of supply chain. It was stated that different forms of integration might contribute to the maintenance and enhancement of environmental, social and economic resources.
Creation and Capture of Innovation Returns for Intensive Urban Agriculture Systems
Get PDFControlled environment agriculture (CEA) allows food plants to be reproducibly grown under conditions of optimal light, temperature, nutrition, and pest control. Space requirements are minimal, and so CEA is ideal for urban areas. Benefits are clear, but the long term economic viability of this new agricultural system is uncertain. We formalize the strategy space for innovation in CEA and discuss the extent to which it is served by investments in public sector agricultural research. We also present a unifying model of the relationship between the organoleptic and other food attributes desired by consumers and the suites of component technologies and business models capable of delivering these attributes via CEA
Spatial Disparities in Unit Labour Costs in Food Products Manufacturing Sector
Get PDFIn case of agricultural economics, an economic growth is most generally understood as long-term process of increasing agricultural production. Especially in neoclassical theory, it is determined mainly by labour productivity. According to the producer’s equilibrium theory the remuneration of labour factor should result from its productivity. If labour remuneration is greater than its productivity, the allocation can be considered as ineffective. Hence, the resulting difference should be financed from other sources. If such a situation occurs in a whole sector, then the producers benefit from the distribution of the value in the economy. The aim of this research is to examine spatial diversity of the ULC (unit labour costs) in EU’s food products manufacturing sector. Defining the ULC as a ratio of the labour remuneration to its productivity, the paper used Moran’s I statistic for identifying the spatial association. For 2008-2014 the study used information from EUROSTAT database
Leveraging High Performance CIP Processes to Reduce Water Usage in the Beverage Industry
Get PDFThe beverage industry around the world has been water-intensive, traditionally involving significant water usage, resulting in conflict over the viability of water sourcing vis-à-vis the respective surrounding ecosystems. Much of the usage has been related to the cleaning and sanitizing of manufacturing lines. With the advent of “clean-in-place” systems (CIP), it is possible to clean these lines in one minute in an environmentally friendly manner.This article discusses the use of advanced CIP to improve the beverage production process through reduction of water consumption, and how continuous improvement will assist in solving a critical problem in food manufacture. The legal ramifications of treatment of water with a concentrated food cleaner will be discussed, as well as an investigation of attaining and exceeding established regulatory standards
Relationship Management and Lean Analysis in Maintaining Horticulture Supply Chains with Micro-businesses in Wales
Get PDFThe horticulture sector is characterised by variability in production volumes and quality, fluctuating prices and goods of short shelf life. ‘Lean’ analysis is used to identify strengths and weaknesses in relationships between micro-businesses in horticulture. Three case studies of small horticultural enterprises, a scale prevalent in the sector in Wales, describe relationships and supply structures.A model for the generic application of relationship management to smaller enterprises is proposed in which the effects of continued adherence in inter-company relationships, and supply system configuration, are examined in relation to the effectiveness of collaborations. Relationship management needs to be a priority in these small enterprises. Buyer dominance over suppliers may decrease the effectiveness of relationships in small and micro-enterprises in Welsh horticulture
The Role of Marketing in Local Food Networks
Get PDFLocal food producers are often advised to collaborate with other local food producers to jointly participate in marketing and sales activities. Local food producers are often small and must operate many different activities to run their company, so the idea to collaborate may help them to become more efficient. We explore the role of marketing in local food networks through an analysis of marketing strategies and marketing mix in six local food networks in central Norway. When producers participate in food networks, they disconnect from direct relationships with their consumers. The value of this relationship must be considered in addition to costs related to sales and distribution in the network. The networks rely on regional products and regional branding as the main marketing strategy and promote local and localized products
Revival of Rural Development: the Urban-Rural Continuum or the Thuenen Model Revisited
Get PDFPresent trends towards urbanization are a challenge to rural development. However new opportunities in food markets, the use of renewable resources and the organization of ecosystem services, due to a.o. emerging developments in technology and logistics, may allow a (partial) reversal of the trend if supported by appropriate initiatives of research, policy and the business community