Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management: Strategy, Operations and Technology

Sustainable production and distribution is a pertinent and timely issue in production economics. This is particularly critical for the food industry, which is still the largest manufacturing sector in many developed and developing countries. Over the past decades, the food industry has experienced dramatic changes. Food production and distribution has become more efficient. The main grocery or supermarket chains have been central to the food chain, dominating international trade, and processing and distribution. Nevertheless, the production and supply of food products to consumers extract large amount of natural resources from the environment. Despite the economic downturn, the inflationary pressures on food pricing have remained high. In the UK, according to the British Retail Consortium, food inflation rose to 4.2% in December 2011. In the same period, inflation in food costs in China, which account for up to half of monthly spending for poor families, accelerated to 9.1% according to the National Bureau of Statistics. The current economic environment is resuling in more and more people in food poverty. While the food industry still battles with food security, waste, farming, and public health, new challenges have emerged such as climate change, oil dependency, fair trade and localism. There is a growing concern about the sustainability of the food industry and the unintended side-effects that can be imposed on the environment, communities and human health. Basic questions that had once receded from everyday life are becoming more crucial to debate – whether food can be supplied, distributed and consumed in a more sustainable way without compromising costs; how should standards be set and technologies be used to improve the sustainable development and minimise the food waste, and ideally to reduce operating costs together; what will be the impacts of standards and technologies on the way food supply chains are operating? It is essential for stakeholders in the food industry to look beyond their organisational boundaries to develop a sustainable food supply chain involving environmental, regulatory, scientific, market, technology, and social-economic factors. There are increasing demands from policy makers, stakeholders and public interest groups for research in pursuit of more holistic solutions. The economic impact of these considerations would become obvious. The main purpose of this special issue is to reflect the recent developments made in this respect and to examine research issues concerned with the analysis and decision support at the strategic, operational and technical levels. Prospective authors are invited to submit original papers presenting new research in sustainable development of the food supply chain. We encourage submissions from all theoretical and methodological perspectives, and researchers from related disciplines. Manuscripts will be judged on the relative merits of their contribution to the research literature within the scope of IJPE. We expect that the submitted papers will break new ground by offering novel and refreshing insights and make substantial contribution to improving industrial practice and/or strengthening the theoretical base necessary for supporting decision making. The scope of this call for papers is necessarily broad to provide flexibility to researchers to address current and emerging topics in sustainable food supply chain management. Areas in which contributions may be made include (but are not limited to): Sustainability, such as environmental issues in production and distribution, reverse and closed-loop supply chains Shelf-life and perishable food inventory management Risk assessment, food quality and safety management and traceability in food supply chains Design of sustainable food production and distribution systems Green and sustainable packaging solutions Process improvement in food production and distribution The impact of ...