Sustainability

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Joe Bogue

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Guest Editor

Department of Food Business and Development, Cork University Buisnees School, University Collge Cork, T12K8AF Cork, Ireland
Interests: strategic food marketing; consumer-oriented new product development; sustainable food systems and the entrepreneurial process
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Dr. Lana Repar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Food Business and Development, Cork University Business School, University College Cork, T12K8AF Cork, Ireland
Interests: food supply chain management; sustainable food systems; digital media marketing; food packaging
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The importance of sustainability across all aspects of the agro-food system has never been so important. Sustainability is increasingly impacting all players within the agro-food system and will continue to influence the structure, nature and innovations in supply chains into the future. The unsustainable patterns of producing, consuming and disposing food in contemporary global society results in complex multi-layered challenges that are reflected in the overall health of our planet, bottlenecks in modern agro-food supply chains, increasing household costs and waste, widening disparities between the “big” and “small” and the “rich” and “poor”, and the deteriorating diversity of the plant and animal worlds.

This Special Issue of Sustainability titled “Innovative Strategic Approaches to Sustainability in the Agro-Food System” will explore innovative approaches to sustainability within food systems by including the perspectives of all players, from primary producers to consumers, and from economic, social and environmental angles. The aim of this Special Issue is to explore new and innovative ways to advance sustainability across the agro-food system. It will bring together original high-quality papers that offer quantitative and/or qualitative accounts of innovative sustainability applications as well as theoretical and conceptual papers that will present advances and best practices for innovative sustainable solutions. This Special Issue will cover key sustainability topics across the domains of business, economics, social science, technology and agriculture. For this Special Issue, original empirical research or theoretical articles and reviews are welcome, as are multidisciplinary approaches to the topics.

The following themes will inform the Special Issue:

Producers, processors, retailers and consumers innovating and responding to sustainability across supply chains
Economic, social or environmental innovations to advance food sustainability
Innovations in sustainable agriculture, fisheries and rural development in advanced, emerging and developing economies
Smart and new technologies in agriculture
Food waste, recycling and upcycling
Changing consumer behaviour
Advancing sustainable food packaging
New approaches to policies and incentives

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Joe Bogue
Dr. Lana Repar
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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.

Keywords

sustainable farm management and transformation
innovations in Agro-Food systems and fisheries supply chains
new smart technologies
community agriculture
sustainable food production and marketing
consumer behaviour and healthy eating
small scale artisanal agriculture and entrepreneurship
local co-operative approaches
advocacy and NGOs

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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20 pages, 941 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards Trusted Data Sharing and Exchange in Agro-Food Supply Chains: Design Principles for Agricultural Data Spaces

by Martina Šestak and Daniel Copot

Sustainability 2023, 15(18), 13746; https://doi.org/10.3390/su151813746 - 14 Sep 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1538

Abstract

In the modern agricultural landscape, realizing data’s full potential requires a unified infrastructure where stakeholders collaborate and share their data to gain insights and create business value. The agricultural data ecosystem (ADE) serves as a crucial socio-technical infrastructure, aggregating diverse data from various platforms and, thus, advertising sustainable agriculture and digitalization. Establishing trustworthy data sharing and exchange in agro-food value chains involves socioeconomic and technological elements addressed by the agricultural data space (ADS) and its trust principles. This paper outlines key challenges to data sharing in agro-food chains impeding ADE establishment based on the review of 27 studies in scientific literature. Challenges mainly arise from stakeholders’ mistrust in the data-sharing process, inadequate data access and use policies, and unclear data ownership agreements. In the ADE context, interoperability is a particularly challenging topic for ensuring the long-term sustainability of the system. Considering these challenges and data space principles and building blocks, we propose a set of design principles for ADS design and implementation that aim to mitigate the adverse impact of these challenges and facilitate agricultural data sharing and exchange. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovation and Sustainability in the Agro-Food System)

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Review

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25 pages, 1677 KiB

Open AccessReview

Emergent Research Themes on Sustainability in the Beef Cattle Industry in Brazil: An Integrative Literature Review

by Yasmin Gomes Casagranda, Joanna Wiśniewska-Paluszak, Grzegorz Paluszak, Giana de Vargas Mores, Leila Dal Moro, Guilherme Cunha Malafaia, Denise Barros de Azevedo and Debin Zhang

Sustainability 2023, 15(5), 4670; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15054670 - 6 Mar 2023

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2870

Abstract

Brazil is one of the world’s biggest beef producers and its largest exporter. However, beef cattle ranching is a leading cause of deforestation and habitat conversion in the Brazilian Amazon, which challenges sustainable development. We adopted the triple bottom line (TBL) as a guiding theory of sustainability and assumed the necessity of a production system-specific approach. Based on an integrative literature analysis, we aimed to assess sustainability pillars in beef cattle production. The Web of Science, Scopus and Science Direct databases were searched for studies on mitigating the adverse impacts of beef cattle production before the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. We found 108 references in these databases, 46 of which met the criteria for eligibility assessment, and ten studies were selected for textual cluster analysis and thematic synthesis. The review shows emergent research themes on sustainability in beef cattle production. It also elaborates a conceptual model of the sustainability pillars in the technique, science, and social aspects of the beef cattle sector that may guide the managerial and political strategies for the beef cattle supply chain in Brazil and other emerging markets. This study indicates that sustainable beef cattle development requires new digital technologies and ideas about sustainable supply chain management, which provides human, environmental, and animal welfare. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Innovation and Sustainability in the Agro-Food System)

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