Building a Sustainable Food Supply Chain and Managing Food Losses

Abstract

With the unprecedented growth in the world's population, the supply of food has already become a major global challenge. The world food crisis highlights a large quantity of food going waste or lost due to many unsustainable practices in the food supply chain. This chapter provides a conceptual model to build a sustainable food supply chain while minimizing the food waste that occurs at different stages. By incorporating stakeholder management and other behavioral aspects while at the same time following a continuous improvement cycle, the model deviates from other techno-oriented or fragmented guidelines available on the subject. For the purpose of better understanding or providing practical applications, real-life case studies are also presented. Hence, the model provides useful guidelines for business organizations and other actors in the food supply chain to incorporate sustainability while minimizing environmental, social, and economic impacts of food losses/waste.