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Food
Published in John C. Ayers, Sustainability, 2017
The primary cause of hunger is not insufficient food production but inadequate food distribution. Between 25 and 50% of food never reaches the dinner table because it becomes spoiled or contaminated due to inefficient storage and distribution systems (Halweil and Nierenberg 2011). More progress has been made in improving productivity than reducing waste because there is a monetary incentive for corporations to develop new products that increase agricultural productivity. Improving food distribution systems is more difficult and less profitable because it requires solutions unique to each culture and region, and requires the cooperation of government, sometimes in the form of policy changes. Improving distribution systems often requires changes in infrastructure and therefore takes much more time than improving productivity. Also, focusing solely on the food distribution problem would ignore the driving forces of decreasing food security such as continued population growth, rising water scarcity, climate change, economic and social inequality, and ineffective government policies (Ehrlich and Harte 2015). Developed countries can best help farmers in the developing world by providing new agricultural technologies, skills, and tools.
Key operational and institutional factors for improving food safety: a case study from Chile
Published in Production Planning & Control, 2021
Haiyan Lu, Sachin Kumar Mangla, Jorge E. Hernandez, Sebastian Elgueta, Guoqing Zhao, Shaofeng Liu, Lise Hunter
The dynamic capabilities view in operations and SCM is of infancy (Ambrosini et al. 2009), yet there is a lack of comprehensive discussions on the theory for solving food safety issues in emerging economics. The operations and SCM literature has developed the research which can both explain the behaviour of operational processes and capture the problems in decision making on design, planning, controlling and executing operations (Akkerman, Poorya, and Grunow 2010; Bertrand and Fransoo 2002). Current studies explore food safety from distinct levels. Wiengarten et al. (2016) from an institutional view claimed that the adoption of multiple food safety standards certainly drives better performance for environmental and practices. Strategically, Vellema, Loorbach, and Notten van (2006) explore the cultural perspective, presenting the roles of food industries, governments, consumers and civil society, and their interactions for food transparency and safety. Uncertainty and vulnerability were also discussed, inherent to dynamic and biological production systems. With competition and dynamics in the food industry rising, acquiring capabilities in operations and SCM has nowadays a key to the grocers’ success. Capabilities are considered including buyer and supplier relationship, information flow, cost control for supply networks, human capital and logistics performance in delivery and ordering systems (Marcus and Anderson 2006). Food sustainability is another area of research interest in operational and supply chain dynamics. Savino, Manzini, and Mazza (2015) investigate environmental and economic assessment of food supply chain through the discussion of supply chain dynamics at different levels. Beske, Land, and Seuring (2014) have conducted a systematic literature review on sustainable SCM and dynamic capabilities in the food industry and evoked the importance of food safety in the entire supply chain quality control. Drawing on the food-specific challenges – perishability, food distribution management regarding to ‘the physical flows and storage of products from the final production point to the customer or end user’ was addressed for controlling food quality and safety in different chain types and supporting decision-making process (Akkerman, Poorya, and Grunow 2010, 866). Regardless the increase of research interest in investigating dynamic capabilities in food supply chain, there is a substantial theoretical gap in researching on food safety and how companies can build their dynamic capabilities to incorporate related issues. As such, this study attempts to fill the gap and focus on the discussion and implementation in emerging economics, where institutional regulation and make conditions are distinguished with the Western societies.