Sustainability for the actors of a food value chain: How to cooperate?

Abstract

To tackle sustainability issues, food value chain actors have to study the nature and objectives of the sustainable performance they want to achieve, both individually and also for the value chain as a whole. But they have different interests, goals and strategies. Consequently if they want to cooperate on a shared device because this represents a possible solution to improve the value chain sustainability, they need to find a way to meet a minimum level of each actor expectations. This case study is about possibilities for actors of a pork value chain representative of one type of French production to cooperate in sharing sustainability improvement solutions. The sustainable impacts of the value chain comprising a shared methanation plant with externalization of 3% of heat and 1% of electricity produced are described and analyzed. The multicriteria evaluation of the value chain is based on a life cycle analysis model with associated environmental and social indicators. The behavior of the methanation plant is simulated using Methasim tool and the input/output flows of the software are bridged to the LCA model. A focus is made on comparing the sustainable performance of two scenarios (standard i.e. without methanation plant and with shared methanation plant) and on confronting results with respective expectations of various players of the value chain in terms of sustainable performance. Is sharing a methanation plant a good solution for the economic actors of the value chain? How to create cooperation between the actors of a value chain in order to increase sustainability of their products and practices? The results and analysis will focus on each actor's contribution to the sustainable footprint and values destroyed or created. New intermediate solutions can be then proposed. The discussion is about methodological ways to facilitate the cooperation and the data flows to be exchanged between value chain actors.

Combining eco-social and environmental indicators to assess the sustainability performance of a food value chain: A case study

“…Section 3 concluded on the need to propose metrics to evaluate the sustainability performance of a whole value chain. To validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the approach, an experimenta tion was carried out in the context of an existing pork value chain in which the actors are already working together to improve the sustainability of their products and want to go further to improve the sustainability of the whole value chain (Monastyrnaya et al, 2017;Petit et al, 2017;Petit et al, 2017a, 2017b, Petit et al, 2016. There is an agreement between the upstream agri food cooperative and the downstream distribution cooperative to define specification standards on pig feed, care and living conditions.…”

Research perspectives in ecodesign

“…Moreover, it is vital to consider a solution's economic consequences for all stakeholders as an element of the system's sustainable performance in order to establish the financial sustainability of the solutions evaluated (Shi et al 2018;Zhang et al 2019). The economic aspect is considered for product analyses on mass-market sustainability (Cases 2, 3 and 10) (Heise & Theuvsen 2014;Baudry, Macharis & Vallée 2018) and also in more global approaches dedicated to valuechain analyses (Cases 4 and 7) (Carter & Rogers 2008;Petit et al 2017a;Petit, Yannou-Le Bris & Trystram 2017b,c). In particular, the inclusion of the life-cycle players' own economic evaluation (calculated margins or production costs) is a supporting element informing public policy decision-making (Cases 3 and 4).…”

“…The economic aspect is considered for product analyses on mass-market sustainability (Cases 2, 3 and 10) (Heise & Theuvsen 2014; Baudry, Macharis & Vallée 2018) and also in more global approaches dedicated to value-chain analyses (Cases 4 and 7) (Carter & Rogers 2008; Petit et al. 2017 a ; Petit, Yannou-Le Bris & Trystram 2017 b , c ). In particular, the inclusion of the life-cycle players’ own economic evaluation (calculated margins or production costs) is a supporting element informing public policy decision-making (Cases 3 and 4).…”

The Impact of Supply Chain Preparedness on Healthcare Service Quality: A Literature Review

“…Health service operations have been substantially transformed not only in practice; the theoretical perspective has shifted as well. The healthcare sector has been investigated in the last ten years in the fields such as logistics, organizational behaviour, and economics [7][8][9][10]. Nevertheless, the knowledge of the healthcare sector in the field of supply chain preparedness is still limited.…”