Sustainable Farm and Food Business Models under Digitalisation

Dear Colleagues,

Digitalisation has the potential of transforming agriculture and the food industry. The rapid evolution of digital technologies is creating opportunities for new agricultural and food business models that can support the quest for more sustainable and safer food production.
Innovation through digitalisation can be incremental, allowing the evolution of traditional farm/food business models, or disruptively, through triggering the creation of brand-new models or the recovery of abandoned, old ones, which are enabled by the new digital technologies.
In any case, increased digitalisation presents challenges that can affect and deeply modify value creation processes, pressuring farms and food companies to reflect on their current business model and explore new opportunities to better cope with sustainability-related issues such as, for instance, low-input agriculture, less polluting production processes, the livelihood of rural communities, the value-enhancement of local food specialties, and enabling smart and short food supply chains. Business size also seems to be an important factor when evaluating technology-based projects, as funding has been seen as a barrier to implementing digitalisation initiatives. However, collaborative frameworks could help to overcome limitations due to small business size.
Phenomena like data exchange and interconnections in agriculture and the food value chain are already showing their potential in the agri-food industry, while other digitalisation-related technologies are making their way.
The main challenge for the agri-food businesses in a strongly digitalised environment is how to design robust and economically viable farm/food business models, which also produce environmental and social benefits.
The objectives of this Special Issue are to provide a thorough analysis of the status, potential, challenges, and recent developments of sustainable farm and food business model innovation and to open a discussion for new ideas.
We invite researchers and experts to submit original research and review articles that can describe the state of the art and further stimulate investigations in the field.
Manuscripts based on integrated and interdisciplinary approaches, discussing the links between sustainability and digital innovation adoption in farming, as well as between sustainability and business, policy, and institutional adaptation to digitalisation in agriculture are particularly welcome.

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Canavari
Prof. Dr. Martin Hingley
Dr. Eliseo Luis Vilalta-Perdomo
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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-anonymized 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.