Sustainable land-use for sustainable food supply chain. A new perspective

Food supply chains (FSCs) involve the processes of food production and packaging, distribution, consumption and disposal. The performances of FSCs are measured by the grade of quality, safety, and sustainability of such activities, from farm-to-fork. Literature recently debates on the impact of manufacturing, distribution and transportation activities on the quality of food products and the environmental sustainability of the whole supply chain. The reduction of the total distance travelled by products during the so-called food journey provides a significant saving of environmental impacts. Nevertheless, the global economy compels companies to ship their products all over the world to fulfill worldwide markets. The twofold management of such conflicting trends requires the definition of new patterns and metrics to track and control the food chain performances throughout the whole product life-cycle. Among these, relevant aspects to be studied are the effective control of the logistic supply network, the environmental sustainability of processes, the sustainable use of land, the management of waste. Considerations on the lands yield, the climatic conditions, the soil features and characteristics, the available natural energy sources, aimed to the management of land use over profitable and environmental perspectives, are necessary as well as the design and planning of the optimal forward-reserve manufacturing and distribution network. The goal of this paper is joining both sides of the coin, the land-planning and logistics concerns over a comprehensive life-cycle perspective for the design, management and control of a sustainable FSC. Such aspects are combined through a top-down procedure based on Geographic Informative System (GIS) applications and mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) modeling to enhance the quality and sustainability of the whole food product life-cycle.