# Digitalization and Future Agro-Food Supply Chain Management: A Literature-Based Implications
## 3 Results and Discussion
### Major Problems in the Agro-Food Supply Chain Addressed by Digitalization (Main Application Areas)  
From all papers reviewed, the main problems addressed by digital technologies or concepts were extracted. The data were then categorized and coded using the MAXQDA2020 software. They were categorized into five major areas, namely: traceability, sustainability, other performance issues along the food chain, other food supply chain management (FSCM) issues, and reducing food waste/loss. The categorization process, which was based on our understanding of the literature reviewed, is described in detail in Appendix A to this paper. Categorizing the main concepts addressed by the reviewed literature was not easy, as some concepts were related and some were inclusive of others. Categorization was performed as follows: all technologies or concepts aimed at traceability were categorized under traceability, including traceability itself, accountability, transparency, auditability, and others. All technologies or concepts aimed at sustainability, directly by mentioning the term or indirectly, were categorized as sustainability, including concepts such as sustainability, sustainable-performance, produce-more-food-more-sustainably, achieve-UN-Sustainable-Development-Goals, agro-food-sustainability-transitions, sustainable-food-systems, sustainable-food-supply-chain, sustainable-food-supply-chain-management, and related others. Technologies or concepts aimed at addressing broad performance issues along the food chain, such as productivity, quality, supply-chain-performance, precision-agriculture, smart-short-food-supply-chain, post-COVID-19 crisis response performance, and others, were categorized as other performance issues. Technologies or concepts related to food supply-chain-management (FSCM) not categorized into the other categories used here, such as supply-chain-management, distribution-management, risk-management, uncertainty-management, decision-making, agri-food-supply-chain-management, network-management, coordination, and others, were categorized under other FSCM issues. Finally, technologies or concepts attempting to deal with food loss and/or waste were categorized as reducing food waste. After categorization, coding was applied. A summary of the main technologies or concepts addressed by the reviewed papers is presented in Figure 4. Based on the codingresults, traceability was the top concept addressed by digitalization technologies/concepts along food chains in the papers reviewed. In second place was sustainability, with a significant number of papers discussing digitalization of the food system as a means to achieve sustainability in its different aspects (social, economic, environmental). Other papers discussed digitalization of the food system to resolve other performance issues along the food chain, other FSCM issues, and reducing food waste, in that order of frequency of mention (Figure 4). Tables 2-4 list the concluding remarks from the papers organized in terms of the problems addressed within the categories considered here traceability (Table 2), sustainability (Table 3), and other performances, FSCM issues, and reducing food loss and waste (Table 4). As it can be seen from Table 2, significant proportions of the reviewed articles discussed the important role of digitalization of food systems in enabling food traceability. Smart contracts, transparency, auditability, recall efficiency, trusted tracking, real-time communications, and control of counterfeiting are some of the basic achievements along the food chains through food system digitalization as can be seen from Table 2.