# Overview of main topics and potentials for future research in the short food supply chains

Célestine Jeannette Commenge, Anne-Laure Ladier, Valérie Botta-Genoulaz

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Célestine Jeannette Commenge, Anne-Laure Ladier, Valérie Botta-Genoulaz. Overview of main top-ics and potentials for future research in the short food supply chains. 2ème Congrès Annuel de la SAGIP, Société d'Automatique de Génie Industriel & de Productique, May 2024, Villeurbanne (France), France. hal-05249624

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# Overview of main topics and potentials for future research in the short food supply chains

Célestine Commenge¹, Anne-Laure Ladier¹, Valérie Botta-Genoulaz¹

INSA Lyon, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne, DISP UR4570, Villeurbanne, 69621, France

{celestine.commenge, anne-laure.ladier, valerie.botta}@insa-lyon.fr

**Mots-clés** : Short food supply chain, alternative food network, local food system, literature review.

## 1 Introduction

Agri-food industry has a global importance as it represented 4% of the world's Gross Domestic product in 2018. However, the traditional food producing system is facing more and more concerns particularly in relation to its environmental impact. Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) or Local Food Systems (LFS) are seen as potential alternatives.

The regulation number 1305/2013 of the European Commission [4] defines Short Food Supply Chains (SFSC) as a food supply chain "involving a limited number of economic operators, committed to cooperation, local economic development, and close geographical and social relations between producers, processors and consumers." According to the European Joint Research Center [3] Local Food Systems (LFS) are generally defined "as those where the production, processing, trade and consumption of food occur in a defined reduced geographical area (depending on the sources and reflections, of about 20 to 100 km radius)".

This subject has found a growing interest in the scientific community. Most literature reviews concentrate on a specific aspect of the SFSC such as their consumers, their governance and their sustainability or on specific forms such as food hubs, family farms and intermediate market channels. However scholars consider more general aspects of SFSC literature : they adopt the sustainability point of view [2], use solely case studies [5] or apply a bibliometric methodology [6]. Therefore, our objectives are to extract, map and structure the general and mainstream topics studied and potentials for future research across diverse scientific fields dealing with SFSC and LFS. As this is not an exhaustive approach, we only based it on literature reviews.

## 2 SFSC main subjects and research potential

### 2.1 Sustainability

**Environment.** Multiple papers study the SFSC environmental influence through food transport and logistics, agricultural production and the involvement of stakeholders in ecological practices. However these researches are particularly lacking in the case of regional food hubs. Part
of the papers only use CO₂ emissions as an evaluation criteria in transportation studies. Most studies focus on stakeholders already involved in environmentally-friendly practices. The environmental influence of waste management is not fully assessed. Besides, comparison between SFSC or LFS and the traditional food system fall short in the literature.

**Economy.** From the economical point of view, getting a higher income is the first incentive for farmers to join a SFSC ; actually farms participating in SFSC do not necessarily gain more income comparatively to the farms only participating in long chains. For better insight, future research should include the development of quantitative modeling of economic flows taking SFSC into account.

SFSC are said to relate to the concept of “sharing economy” which “refers to models of co-access and co-ownership of resources, goods and services” [7] : among the debated potential advantages are common investments for stakeholders with more limited resources or benefits for local economy. From this point of view, food hubs are under-studied. Scholars also underline that bigger industries are likely to gain control over these shared resources, thus “the tension between predominance or co-existence between large and small actors in the sharing economy literature is still unresolved.” [7]

Economical studies also focus on SFSC's clients. The literature concentrates on their characteristics, roles and expectations : their adoption of local food, their willingness to pay more for it or their expectations for using a digital platform among others. Quantitative data on their purchases are however incomplete. Moreover, the factors driving consumers to shop at farmers' markets are still under-studied. Finally, consumers are little involved in paper studying sustainable consumption and socio-economically advantaged ones are over-represented.

**Social.** From the social point of view, direct relationships are the first studied configuration and their establishment through new technologies like social media is a recent growing subject. Most benefits of SFSC relations seem to result from the trust developed between participants : improvement of information flows, initiation of social change, acceleration of issues resolutions and boost of innovations. Most scholars agree upon the potential of SFSC in triggering positive changes but there is no consensus or measure on their exact impact. A potential opening would be to study how these chains provide ecosystem services.

On a different topic, the nutritious and healthiness qualities of the SFSC and LFS products are often presupposed but have yet to be established and compared. This leads to question the way these characteristics are evaluated and controlled all the more as these chain are usually seen as transparent businesses.

## 2.2 Governance

Collaborative governance, as defined by Chris Ansell and Alison Gash (2008) [1], is a mode of governance which “brings multiple stakeholders together in common forums with public agencies to engage in consensus-oriented decision making”. Its creation and evolution come under a particular attention for scholars who study factors that facilitate or prevent the cooperation : for examples the supply chain configuration, the resources and capacity constrains of the actors, and more particularly their predisposition to collaborate, and their mutual trust. Among these factors, the political institutions’ influence and the leadership dynamics are understudied.

The resulting power and negotiations dynamics from collaborative governance are another major subject as SFSC are supposed to establish more horizontal relationships or democratic decision-making. Collaborative governance would help stakeholders to better evaluate their bargaining position within the supply chain and therefore improve their ability to influence decisions, particularly in the context of intermediate supply chain. However, potential power disparities are an under-studied topic. For example, the point of view of producers on their bargaining power on price is a potential for future research.
## 2.3 Supply chain configuration

The majority of papers focus on SFSC configurations, issues and challenges through the study of small and medium sized enterprises or through the study of specific SFSC types such as local ones and community supported agriculture. Intermediate supply chains, food hubs and urban produced food networks are left to investigate. Scholars also study the overall SFSC using models such as SCOR model. However, investigations about SFSC optimization, main characteristics, accessibility, similarities and differences, impacts on others distribution systems or advantages and disadvantages between the different configurations as well as their design are under-explored subjects. To give an example, few knowledge exists about the farmers' distribution system. Moreover, most studies are centered on a product distribution and production processes without considering side activities such as sourcing, packaging, waste management etc.

Another important direction of research concerns the SFSC and LFS as they extend their scope of operation. In the literature, one of the main evoked scenario is going from a face-to-face business to a intermediate market channel; however, the exact course of this process is still unclear.

Finally, only a few papers consider resilience of the SFSC and LFS. Authors suggest to observe the impacts of the pandemic and use it as a case study. Modeling scenarios and evaluating their pros and cons in a food security perspective is a potential for future research.

# 3 Conclusion

Our contribution is the identification and structuring of topics and potentials for future research in the growing SFSC and LFS literature. Future work will aim at proposing an overview of the methodologies and indicators – used in literature as well as on the field – to evaluate the sustainability of the SFSC.

## References

[1] C. Ansell and A. Gash. "Collaborative Governance in Theory and Practice". In: *Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory* 18 (4 2008), pp. 543-571.

[2] Y. Chiffoleau and T. Dourian. "Sustainable food Supply Chains: Is shortening the answer? A literature review for a research and innovation agenda". In: *Sustainability* 12 (23 2020), p. 9831.

[3] European Commission Joint Research Centre et al. "Short Food Supply Chains and Local Food Systems in the EU. A State of Play of their Socio-Economic Characteristics." In: *JRC Scientific and Policy Reports* (2013), p. 123.

[4] European Parliament and Council of the European Union. *Regulation (EU) No 1305/2013 of 17 December 2013 on support for rural development by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 1698/2005*. 2013.

[5] F. Gori and A. Castellini. "Alternative Food Networks and Short Food Supply Chains: A systematic literature review based on a case study approach". In: *Sustainability* 15 (10 2023), p. 8140.

[6] J. Luo, Y. Liang, and Y. Bai. "Mapping the intellectual structure of short food supply chains research: a bibliometric analysis". In: *British Food Journal* 124 (9 2022), pp. 2833-2856.

[7] I. Miralles, D. Dentoni, and S. Pascucci. "Understanding the organization of sharing economy in agri-food systems: evidence from alternative food networks in Valencia". In: *Agriculture and Human Values* 34 (4 2017), pp. 833-854.