Planning Sustainable Food Supply Chains to Meet Growing Demands

Planners, stakeholders, and researchers are wondering whether we will have enough to eat in future and at which costs. Many issues indeed still affect the economic, environmental and social sustainability of the food sector. Arising from the assumption that more complex food chains require advanced planning methods able to embrace their multidisciplinary nature, this paper explores the impact of cross-disciplinary approaches for the planning of sustainable food ecosystem including all stages from suppliers to consumers. A quantitative planning model is then discussed and used to study the economic and environmental performance of two alternative supply scenarios of tomatoes in the Mediterranean basin. The findings from the illustrated case showcase the impact of multidisciplinary planning models on the design of sustainable food chain able to meet the growing demand in agreement with different dimensions of sustainability.