Food, Supply Chains, and Sustainable Development—Second Edition

Dear Colleagues,

Increasing attention has been paid to food, supply chains, and sustainable development in recent years. The requirements of food security and the effective use of limited resources urge people to establish food supply chains that support sustainable development (Wu et al., 2018). In the process of supplier selection, the ability to reduce negative ecological impacts and promote sustainability are increasingly becoming major criteria. The technology used to augment food supply chain operations (such as logistics, packaging, etc.) also has an impact on sustainability. More specifically, the sustainable development of food supply chains mainly focuses on reducing the adverse impacts food production, processing, packaging, storage, transportation, and sales exert on the environment, whilst also satisfying the needs of consumers and reducing waste as much as is possible.

The food supply chain starts from the production of raw materials and ends on the consumer’s table, and covers multiple dimensions and stages in between (Govindan, 2018). Achieving the sustainable development of food supply chains requires the joint efforts of governments, enterprises, and consumers; therefore, coordinating these different parties in an effort to achieve the sustainable development of food supply chains is beneficial to improving social welfare, optimizing economic and environmental utility, and protecting the environment (Moreno-Miranda et al., 2022). What effective measures each party should adopt to achieve sustainability and how best to promote the active involvement of all parties have always been key issues for the research fields related to this topic. However, there remain many problems and barriers to achieving these goals. These research fields have yet to mature.

This Special Issue of Sustainability entitled “Food, Supply Chains, and Sustainable Development—Second Edition” aims to explore different strategies and technologies enabling stakeholders to both earn profits and achieve sustainability, as well as seeking to engage with the complicated relationships between farms and other elements of food supply chains. In this Special Issue, constructive theories, practical measures, and meaningful findings will be presented and we are interested in including review papers and qualitative and quantitative research papers, such as case studies and surveys.

This Special Issue welcomes submissions covering, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Food enterprise strategies for achieving sustainability and reducing losses;
• Trade-offs between corporate social responsibility, environmental impacts, and profits;
• Technologies that improve food supply chain operational efficiency and achieve sustainability;
• Innovative theories and approaches regarding the coordination of all members vertically and horizontally;
• Government efforts to reduce and mitigate the environmental impacts of food supply chains;
• Public policies that encourage enterprises to make greater efforts;
• Approaches to enhancing consumer awareness of sustainability.

References

1. Moreno-Miranda, C., Dries, L. Integrating coordination mechanisms in the sustainability assessment of agri-food chains: From a structured literature review to a comprehensive framework. Econ. 2022, 192, 107265.
2. Govindan, K. Sustainable consumption and production in the food supply chain: A conceptual framework. J. Prod. Econ. 2018, 195, 419-431.
3. Wu, P. J., Huang, P. C. Business analytics for systematically investigating sustainable food supply chains. Clean. Prod. 2018, 203, 968-976.

Dr. Victor Shi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• food
• supply chains
• sustainable development
• coordination
• corporate social responsibility
• social welfare

• Food, Supply Chains, and Sustainable Development in Sustainability (7 articles)