Food System Dynamics (E-Journals)
Not a member yet
929 research outputs found
Sort by
Trust no One? Citizens’ Concerns regarding the Pork and Dairy Supply Chain
Get PDFLatest studies show that a responsible treatment of farm animals is important to many citizens. Furthermore, societal expectations towards animal husbandry and present husbandry systems mismatch more and more. Thereby, pig production is criticized more than dairy farming. This paper gives insights into citizens’ main points of criticism among the pork and dairy cattle supply chain. It also intends to show several aspects of distrust.To capture a variety of opinions and expectations among the population, focus groups with citizens were carried out. For each topic (pig and dairy cattle husbandry) six focus groups took place in three German cities. Participants discussed about their perception of actual animal husbandry with respect to housing systems, animal health and well-being. Using content analysis with a mixed inductive and deductive category system, three sources of concerns were identified: role of farmers, legal framework and food retail.First, participants reflect the role of farmers and discuss that farmers only comply with the minimum of statutory requirements. Accordingly, participants think that farmers accept fines in order to avoid changes in their animal husbandry. Second, participants doubt the legal framework. In their view the standards are very low, especially regarding animal welfare. So, for instance, it enables farmers to circumvent the regulations. To improve the situation, participants emphasize a major revision of the legal framework for animal husbandry. Another critical focus is on legal controls. Participants remark that controls are often announced previously. The third point of criticism affects food retail. It is complicated for consumers to understand the complete supply chain. According to this, animal production takes more and more place behind closed doors without transparency. Altogether these aspects lead to an increasing rejection of animal products. The concerns were stronger in case of pork than in case of dairy cattle. As a consequence, some participants state to consume less or no pork or change to meat alternatives.Results suggest different possibilities among the complete supply chain, to understand citizens’ points of concerns better and to improve the situation of farm animal husbandry. Doing so, citizens’ concerns might be reduced resulting in more trust into the whole system again. Hence, more consumers of meat will be kept and will not consume more and more meat substitutes
Food supply chain side flows management through Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing: a practitioner’s perspective
Get PDFUrged by the importance of resource efficiency and circular economy agenda policy makers, many stakeholders are seeking alternatives for current surplus food or side flows within the food supply chain. Any new valorisation or intervention aimed to prevent food waste will however be associated with impacts (monetary and environmental). To allow informed decision making at all levels, from individual stakeholder to policy level, robust, consistent and science based approaches are required. The EU H2020 funded project REFRESH (Resource Efficient Food and dRink for the Entire Supply cHain) aims to contribute to food waste reduction throughout the food supply chain, and evaluate the environmental impacts and life cycle costs. This paper presents a guidance document being developed within REFRESH on how to apply Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and environmental Life Cycle Costing (E-LCC) and how to combine them in the context of food waste. Recommendations are given on the scoping on footprint studies as well as on change-oriented studies on interventions for side flows from the food supply chain. The overall aim of the current research is contribute to a better scoping practice of LCAs and LCCs of side flows in a food waste context
Testing the Effectiveness of Network Governance Mechanisms to Foster Ambidexterity of Agricultural Innovation Networks in East and Central Africa
Get PDFWe tested three innovation network governance mechanisms for exploring and exploiting innovation opportunities. We analysed household-level panel data from agricultural innovation networks in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. We found that first-order governed networks fostered capabilities for exploitation as well as exploration, while second-order governed networks fostered specialised capabilities for exploitation. Meta-governed innovation networks were most effective in combining multiple capabilities for exploration and exploitation. However, our results indicate that governance alone is not a solution to ambidexterity of innovation networks and we recommend further research on the context as a mediating factor between governance and capabilities
Perception of Performance Indicators in an Agri-Food Supply Chain: A Case Study of India’s Public Distribution System
Get PDFAvailability of nutritious, safe food, and guaranteed resources for a household to acquire food at all times results in food security. Availability of food at affordable price remains the greater challenge. Currently, the Indian government runs the Public Distribution System to provide commodity subsidies to households. Various government and private stakeholders are involved in making this procurement, storage, processing and distribution process work. The involvement of a large number of stakeholders, each with different interests, increases the complexity and difficulty to identify performance indicators of the supply chain. Current research evaluates the relationship among the participating stakeholders in the public distribution system and ways in which these stakeholders construct the definition of performance measurements. This is done by utilizing a case study of Public distribution system: rice supply chain management in Chhattisgarh, India. To investigate the role and relationship of the stakeholders, first the rice supply chain is mapped. Once the stakeholders are identified, the study then focuses on comprehending relevant performance indicators and how they are defined in the supply chain
Benchmarking Agri-Food Value Chain Performance Factors in South Mediterranean Countries
Get PDFFruits and vegetables (F&V) and olive oil are in South Mediterranean Countries (SMCs) two prominent agricultural activities in terms of contribution to national economy and exports. However, both are affected by inefficiencies and poor performance, in particular on the export market. In this paper we assess and compare performance factors between F&V and olive oil value chains (VCs) in Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt and Turkey, on the one side, and in Spain and Italy taken as benchmarks, on the other side. We propose an adapted Value Chain Maturity Model to benchmark performance factors in these VCs in SMCs. The proposed method could help to identifying poor performing areas in these VCs in order to suggest measures to improve their overall performance in general and export performance in particular. Findings confirm a robust association between VC maturity and performance. VC participants should learn from best practices and incorporate them for improvement, in particular in the areas of VC organization, responsiveness and technology adoption and implementation. In addition, more efficient agri-food exportation from SMCs needs more focus on trade facilitation issues including improvements in administrative procedures, infrastructure and technologies that reduce costs and time to export and facilitate investment. Further challenges outline the need for improvements in the areas of transparency, standards, certification, food safety, traceability and sustainability, taking into consideration that long-term partnerships are desired by international buyers to ensure product supply and quality. Public policies should be refocused towards these new challenges considering not only purely economic performance in these countries but also social development and environmental protection and resource preservation
The Social Robot: A Study of the Social and Political Aspects of Automatic Milking Systems
Get PDFWe explored social and political aspects of milking robot (automatic milking system; AMS) use and expansion in dairy farming. Over 30 % of dairy farms in Norway have an AMS, and the percentage is rapidly increasing. We interviewed 26 dairy farmers with AMSs in the county of Rogaland, Norway. Primary motives for investing in milking robots are a more flexible workday, reduced physical work, and a desire to join the perceived future standard of dairy farming. Although farmers are motivated by social factors, AMS is a key element in a structural change driven by political, economic, and social factors
Chain Failure and Chain Goods: Re-thinking Value Chain Upgrading and Promotion in Developing Countries
Get PDFThe concept of value chain upgrading and promotion has been proposed as a vehicle for small-holder farmers in developing countries to gain access to higher value markets and thus generate greater income for their families and communities. However, there are many instances where investments in upgrading have not generated the expected outcomes. One of the contributing factors has been that existing approaches focus more on who does what rather than the real problem to be addressed. A chain failure framework on the other hand focuses attention on the core problem and the appropriate response, rather than on who does what. It takes a system view rather than a function or component view, and it starts from the supposition that the only reason for intervening in a value chain is to increase chain surplus, where chain surplus is properly measured to include any chain or social externalities. In this paper we review some of the existing literature on value chain upgrading and promotion as proposed for developing country situations, outline the essential elements of the chain failure/chain good theory and its relationship to the club goods literature, and then assess whether the chain upgrading and promotion literature can be reconfigured as a chain failure/chain good problem, using a number of published case studies. Finally, we discuss various types of governance models used in agricultural value chains in developing countries and suggest how well they might align with the chain failure/chain good approach
Identifying Socioeconomic Characteristics Defining Consumers’ Acceptance for Main Organoleptic Attributes of an Iron-biofortified Bean Variety in Guatemala
Get PDFThe success of biofortification, the process of generating new staple crops varieties with higher micronutrient content, depends on whether those biofortified cultivars are accepted by target populations. Consumer behavior economics argues that socioeconomic, cultural and biological characteristics define consumer preferences for specific product attribute. This study aims to establish which socio-demographic characteristics predict respondents’ preferences for the main sensory attributes of an iron bean variety. A home use testing approach and sensory evaluation was applied to 360 families in northwest Guatemala. We found that revealed preferences are mostly culturally formed and market related, more than influenced by socio-demographic characteristics
Analysis of Short Food Supply Chain Governances: Innovative Collective Platforms Supplying Local Produce
Get PDFThis paper addresses the issue of governance diversity of innovative semi wholesale SFSC such as multi stake-holder platforms acting as middlemen between local producers and buyers (individual and collective ones) wishing to procure local products. We apply the new institutional economics approach with special attention to ownership rights allocation (Hansmann, 1988), collective decision-making (Pozzobon and Zylbersztajn, 2013) and associated transaction costs (Williamson, 1991; Menard, 2004; Chaddad, 2012). Those concepts were already used in analysis of various agri-businesses, cooperatives and their vertical relations in supply chains but little has been done in terms of SFSC. We rely on this framework to provide a comparative analysis of their governance structures based on a detailed description of the “horizontal” relations among stake-holders and “vertical” relations between the platforms and their suppliers and customers
Antecedents of Intention and Behavior Towards Fair Trade Products: A Study on Values and Attitudes in Italy
Get PDFThe current study investigates the significance and power of direct and indirect effects of values and attitudes on intention to buy fair trade products and on self-reported behaviors. Drawing on previous research, we selected three attitudinal measures – Consciousness for Fair Consumption, Environmental Concern, Moral Reasoning – and two categories of human values, Power and Universalism. Through a web-based survey conducted in Italy we collected data analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Results showed that Universalism exerted a positive indirect effect on buying fair traded products while Power exerted a negative effect. Therefore, according to Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1991), the intention was the only direct antecedent of behavior