Food System Dynamics (E-Journals)
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Matching Brazilian Soybean Production to the EU Sustainability Standards’ Requirements. Compliance of the Sojaplus Management Program with the Fefac Guidelines
Get PDFSoybean is a major ingredient for animal feeding in the EU, which is highly dependent on its import. Brazil is the main exporter of soy meal to Europe contributing to nearly 30% of EU total import of meal. The last ten years saw an increased demand from the EU feed and food industry in using sustainable raw material. In this context, the European Feed Manufacturer Federation (FEFAC) is currently discussing a guideline for the characteristics that sustainable soy production should have. At the same time, China has increased its share of import of soy and has become the main importer of soy in the world. Competition between Europe and Chine for the supply of soy is increasing. Trade barriers, due to complex sustainability requirements from the EU, could affect its import from Brazil. The SOJAPLUS program is a key initiative concerning the sustainability of soy production in Brazil. It was set up by the Brazilian Vegetable Oil Industries Association (ABIOVE) and by the Soybean Farmers Association (APROSOJA-MT). Considering the potential of this initiative to support the supply to the European market of significant amounts of sustainable soy, the objective of this paper is to discuss the possible harmonization of the sustainability criteria defined by these important EU and Brazilian soy market players. The two set of criteria have been compared, adopting the ITC data base and comparison method; the results show that SOJAPLUS comprises all FEFAC principles and most of its criteria. The main difference, however, is related to the verification system, which in SOJAPLUS is a 1st party system (self-verification) while the FEFAC guidelines consider a 3rd party system (audits); a relevant issue, common to both the FEFAC and SOJAPLUS approach, is related to the inclusion of GMO soy in the sustainability guidelines. As the FEFAC guidelines are still in discussion, there is a very interesting opportunity to harmonize both systems aiming at increasing the sustainability of soybean supply from Brazil to Europe by tackling the difficult challenges of 3rd party certification and GMO soy inclusion. The latter being a major concern for EU consumers, policy makers, farmers’ associations and other stakeholders involved in the processing and consumption of soy
Assessing Indicators and Limits for a Sustainable Everyday Nutrition
Get PDFHuman nutrition is responsible for about 30% of the global natural resource use. In order to decrease resource use to a level in line with planetary boundaries, a resource use reduction in the nutrition sector by a factor 2 is suggested. A large untapped potential to increase resource efficiency and improve consumers’ health status is assumed, but valid indicators and general guidelines to assess these impacts and limits can barely be found. Therefore we will have a try to define sustainable limits towards the individuals’ daily diet and therefore stimulate current available scientific debate.Within the paper an examination of existing indicators and assessment methods is carried out. We set the focus on health indicators, such as energy intake, and environmental indicators, such as the carbon or material footprint. The paper aims to provide first, an assessment of core indicators to explore the sustainability impact of foodstuff, and second, a deeper understanding and a discussion of sustainable limits for those dimensions of food and nutrition. Therefore we will discuss several ecological and health indicators which may be suitable to assess the sustainabilty impact and indicate differences or similarities. As a result it becomes obvious that several ecological indicators “point in the same direction” and therefore a discussion about the variability and the variety of these indicators has to be faced in the future. Further the definition of sustainable levels per indicator is an essential aspect to get an idea about the needed barriers for a sustainable nutrition, by now first steps had been made, but no binding guidelines are available yet. Therefore the paper suggests a few indications to set up sustainable levels for health and environmental indicators, based on the idea to reduce the resource use level up to 30-50% in 2030
The Measuring the Efficiency of Food Chains – Selected Approaches
Get PDFThe aim adopted in the paper is to review methods for assessing the efficiency of supply chains and to carry out their critical evaluation. Literature studies, interviews, analysis of processes in the chains are used for analyzing of interdependence between the individual stages of supply chain and identifying the efficiency of entire supply chain. An important aspect is to determine the possibility of assessing the efficiency of supply chains in selected sectors of agribusiness by using approaches presented in the paper. Within the analyzed methods, the stochastic frontier approach can be an useful tool for estimating the efficiency on the firm level. However, the efficiency scores obtained from estimation of the stochastic frontier have a little use for policy implications and management purposes if the empirical studies do not investigate the sources of the inefficiency. Thus, it is recommended to include into the models external factors like, for instance, the degree of competitive pressure, the ownership form, various managerial characteristics, network characteristics and production quality indicators of inputs or outputs
Consumers’ Preference for Sweet Peppers with Different Process Attributes: A Discrete Choice Experiment in Taiwan
Get PDFBased on an online discrete choice experiment (DCE) this study investigates the relative importance of food label information (country of origin, production methods, chemical residue testing (CRT)) and price for Taiwanese consumers’ in their purchase of sweet peppers. Results show that respondents focus mostly on the COO labeling during their sweet-pepper shopping, followed by price. Information concerning CRT results and production methods are of less importance. Our findings also indicate that interaction between attributes matter and that preference for attribute levels differs depending on socioeconomic characteristics
HortiCube: A Platform for Transparent, Trusted Data Sharing in the Food Supply Chain
Get PDFFood supply chains consist of many links and operate on a global scale with many stakeholders involved from farm to fork. Each stakeholder maintains data about food products that they handle, but this data is not transparently available to all other stakeholders in the chain due to various reasons. Trust and reciprocity for data sharing is limited and there is insufficient clarity in data ownership and possible legal consequences. However, various stakeholders could benefit from making data available across the supply chain. Food producers are very interested in consumer demands and trends. Growers also want to guide their supply based on the potential demand for specific food products in the near future. In addition, there are various other data sources that contain interesting data for these same stakeholders, such as import/export transactions, production (forecast) data, parcel crop information, local weather predictions and social media streams. To make all stakeholders in the food chain benefit from these data sources and to share data more transparently, the Dutch horticulture and food domain is developing the HortiCube platform via which various data sources are made accessible to application developers using a secure, linked data application interface. This paper describes the development of the HortiCube, the technologies being used and the lessons learned on aligning semantics by mapping of terms and the implementation performance using an example demo application
Local Economic Development and Sustainable Global Development: Food Security and Food Sovereignty
Get PDFIn this paper the author argues that sustainable development starts always solving the basic needs, mainly food needs and food security concerns of any community. Those concerns are key stones for any social-economic development process, and need to be addressed in terms of guarantees in time and through time.Security concerns at several levels should be on the agenda, but food is a necessary condition to address the other dimensions of the human security concerns. The actual food system today represents one of the big achievements of the human community, at global/world level, in terms of solving the global needs in food, but it is still far away from solving the human needs at local community level and individual level where many problems are present. For example, hunger in the last 20-30 years have been always between 800 million persons and 1 billion, and malnutrition is now even with bigger numbers, with estimations for obesity above 1,2 billion persons.The main argument of the paper is around the understanding that global sustainable development can only be achieved with local economic development, and it will be used the food system analysis to provide evidences on that matter. However this view cannot be confused with an inward perspective and it will be shown that improvements in trade flows are also important moves in most cases, regarding economic development and quality of life. Food security concerns and food sovereignty are both key dimensions to be analyzed in any food system, but both concepts have a lot in common, and can be seen as convergent in many dimensions. Two case studies will be used to provide support to the discussion, (one European Country and an African Country), showing that human welfare and food nutrition can be improved through time, where the food production system play an important role, but also trade, and where local economic development does not mean necessarily lower dependency from abroad. Policy and economic development experts should be able to address and provide solutions to improve welfare, food security and food sovereignty, preserving and improving equilibrium with nature, autonomy, freedom of choice, less vulnerability of the systems and, at the same time, taking full advantage of the international relations and trade opportunities
Mi Pueblo Food Center
Get PDFThis case describes a current growth opportunity for Mi Pueblo Food Center, a Hispanic grocery chain with locations throughout the Bay Area, California. The CEO of Mi Pueblo is contemplating opening a new store location in East Palo Alto, CA, which has been without a local, full-service grocery store for over 20 years. Case objectives are for students to develop an understanding of how the grocery industry operates, the risks and opportunities associated with opening a new grocery store location, and the impact on social, environmental, and economic sustainability. The SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) framework is used to analyze whether or not it is feasible for Mi Pueblo to open a new location in East Palo Alto. This case may be used with students in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses
Urban AgriCulture and Food Systems Dynamics in the German Bonn/Rhein-Sieg Region
Get PDFAgricultural activities within city boundaries have a long history in both developed and developing countries. In this paper, a broad approach to Urban AgriCulture (UAC) is used, one that includes the production of crops in urban and peri-urban areas and ranges in developed countries from allotment gardens over community gardens to semi-entrepreneurial self-harvest farms and fully commercialized agriculture. With an empirical case study on UAC Initiatives in the Bonn/Rhein-Sieg region this work fills a gap since the lack of comprehensive and comparative studies on urban agriculture (UA) currently makes it difficult for researchers to identify the benefits of UA activities
Accelerating System Development for the Food Chain: a Portfolio of over 30 Projects, Aiming at Impact and Growth
Get PDFSupply of fresh food is of vital importance to feed Europe in a healthy way, while Europe has also an important role in feeding the world. Food products and other perishables such as flowers impose very challenging demands on the management of its supply chains. Food networks are struggling with an integrated usage of information and communication technology (ICT) that enables the heterogeneous stakeholders in the food chain to exchange information in real-time and control workflows based on requirements with respect to quality, costs and schedule. Innovative ICT systems that are addressing such challenges are currently being developed by a large European initiative, called FIWARE. Within this paper, we will discuss a portfolio of 31 projects that are realising solutions for the food chain in close collaboration with supporting business partners. Diverse food related topics are addressed, such as logistics, transport, planning & control, tracking & tracing, information management as well as new ways to realise e-commerce within the chain as well as for consumers.The FIWARE initiative is accelerating startups and supporting SME type technology developers that are realising solutions for real world business cases, which are serving as reference customers and test cases to assure an end-user acceptance and valid business models. This paper discusses the main food chain related topics and innovation potentials that are addressed as well as outlining the related methodological and technological approaches that are used to facilitate the realisation of impact and growth for commercial exploitation