What Can We Learn from Best Practices Regarding Food Chain Transparency?

 This paper reports on food chain transparency. The research specifically aims to investigate best practices. Therefore, inductive research was conducted, starting with the identification of best practices. Further, underlying patterns were investigated to derive hypotheses and to develop a theoretical framework. These were confronted with literature findings which resulted in the validation of the hypotheses and the theoretical framework. Overall it can be concluded that several types of food chain transparency exist, whereas the different types represent a hierarchy of transparency domains, and that the basis mainly applies to information quality. In addition, it is shown that performance indicators measure directly or indirectly the success of transparency

EIT Food - EU PRO4BAKE project: Improve artigianal bakeries performances considering both demand forecast and process optimisation: the EIT FOOD Pro4Bake approach

The bakery products subsector has the largest number of companies, value added, employees and numberof companies in Europe (Food and Drinks, 2011). Over-consumption of energy in bakeries due to inefficientscheduling and production planning together with high shares of unsold bread waste (5-10% in Europe) is abig issue. Not only avoidable CO2 emissions affecting climate change and society, but also excessive costsfor SME bakeries are severe consequences. Recently, the EU has identified the bakery sector as one of thetarget sectors to apply best environmental practices. The aim of the envisaged project is in line with thegoals of the EU (Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009, 2017/1508 of 28 August 2017 EU): minimising food wasteand reducing energy consumption.The Pro4Bake project aims to provide tools that could improve the bakery situation. A prospectiveproduction-planning tool for bakeries is being developed in this trans- and interdisciplinary project. Presentmachinery in bakeries is used to optimise the production process. The reduction of make span and idle timeof machines, but also combinations thereof will lead to a higher economic and ecologic efficiency, thus,lower production costs for bakeries and lower climate change impact for society. The tool is developedusing a flow-shop model, optimised by evolutionary algorithms, digital twins and artificial intelligenceprocedures. Adaptation to consumers’ preferences will minimise food waste; hence, ecological footprint inbakeries, and lead to further optimisation of the baking process, product range and amount. Consumers’demands and expectations related to e.g. weather or holidays, and their acceptance of changes in productavailability will play a significant role in the analysis. In the end, a computational application will help SMEbakeries as users to adapt their production planning and processes to best practice. Subsequently, itspotential in practical application will be examined and its impact broadened to the rest of Europe andbeyond. Dissemination through technology transfer to users by involving professionals, students andlearning videos will be performed. The product will be commercialised in the end to make it possible forbakeries to adapt to the truly needed amount and product range with optimised baking schedules toreduce energy consumption. The multidisciplinary approach, combining research optimisation methods anddemand forecast approach used could be easily transferred to other agri-food sectors

Value propositions for improving the competitiveness of short food supply chains built on technological and non-technological innovations

There has been growing consumer demand for the products and services of the short food supply chains (SFSCs) in recent times. A procedure was developed to identify the technological and technological innovations that can improve the performance and competitiveness of the SFSCs. The needs of the SFSCs for innovative solutions were collected by interviewing 18 SFSCs from 9 countries. An inventory was prepared to contain 136 technological and non-technological innovations, meeting these needs. The innovations were collected from the good practices of the 18 SFSCs, experiences of the project partners and state of the art. The success factors and bottlenecks of each short food supply chain operation and their current value propositions were identified. From the inventory, those innovations were selected for each short food chain case study which can be applied to eliminate or reduce the bottlenecks or enhance the success factors leading to new, upgraded value propositions with increased added value for the consumers. The new, upgraded value propositions can serve as a starting point for developing a strategy for improving the competitiveness of a short food chain organisation through the application of innovations

The effect of various metal-salts on the sedimentation of soil in a water-based suspension

Soil particles and bound nutrients that erode from agricultural land may end up in surface waters and cause undesirable changes to the environment. Various measures, among them constructed wetlands have been proposed as mitigation, but their efficiency varies greatly. This work was motivated by the assumption that the induced coagulation of particles may accelerate sedimentation in such wetlands and by that help reduce the amount of material that is lost from the vicinity of the diffuse source. Our specific aim was to laboratory-test the effectiveness of various salt-based coagulants in accelerating the process of sedimentation. We tested the effect of Na+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe3+ and Al3+ cations in 10, 20, 40 and 80 mg L-1 doses added to a soil solution in select, soluble forms of their chlorides, sulphates and hydroxides. We mixed such salts with 1 gram of physically dispersed, clay and silt rich (>85% in total) soil material in 500 mL of solution and used time-lapse photography and image analysis to evaluate the progress of sedimentation over 3 hours. We found that 20–40 mg L-1 doses of Mg2+, Ca2+ in their chloride or sulphate forms appeared to provide the best consensus in terms of efficiently accelerating sedimentation using environmentally present and acceptable salts but keeping their dosage to a minimum. Comprehensive in-field efficiency and environmental acceptability testing is warranted prior to any practical implementation, as well as an assessment of small scale economic and large-scale environmental benefits by retaining soil and nutrients at/near the farm.publishedVersio

Supply Chain Competences: The Case of the Traditional Food Sector in the EU

Since over the last twenty years the reduction of trade barriers, the increasing liberalisation, the advancement in ICT have determined a growth in the horizontal and vertical competition among firms in the chain. Therefore, today more than ever they are pressured to develop appropriate strategies in order to become more competitive (Montgomery and Porter, 1993; Grant, 1996; Porter, 1996). However, firms nowadays no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Fearne, 1998; Van der Vorst et al., 1998; Sahay, 2003; Green and Inman, 2005; Green et al., 2006; Hult et al., 2007; Ketchen and Hult, 2007; Sezen, 2008) and consequently, the dynamic and mutually dependent character of relations in these chains cause a challenge for these firms towards the development of strategies that ensure competitiveness. One of the key success factors for facing this challenge is the proper management of these relations (accompanying products, services, finances, information and/or knowledge flows), focusing on harmonizing the use of resources, capabilities and core competencies along the entire chain (instead focusing only on individual firms only) to deliver higher added value

Supply Chain Competences: The Case of the Traditional Food Sector in the EU

Since over the last twenty years the reduction of trade barriers, the increasing liberalisation, the advancement in ICT have determined a growth in the horizontal and vertical competition among firms in the chain. Therefore, today more than ever they are pressured to develop appropriate strategies in order to become more competitive (Montgomery and Porter, 1993; Grant, 1996; Porter, 1996). However, firms nowadays no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Fearne, 1998; Van der Vorst et al., 1998; Sahay, 2003; Green and Inman, 2005; Green et al., 2006; Hult et al., 2007; Ketchen and Hult, 2007; Sezen, 2008) and consequently, the dynamic and mutually dependent character of relations in these chains cause a challenge for these firms towards the development of strategies that ensure competitiveness. One of the key success factors for facing this challenge is the proper management of these relations (accompanying products, services, finances, information and/or knowledge flows), focusing on harmonizing the use of resources, capabilities and core competencies along the entire chain (instead focusing only on individual firms only) to deliver higher added value

Food Awareness and Transparency: Current Practices and Future Tools

Within the SmartAgriFood project the envisaged functions of Future Internet (FI) were collected and explained to the business users. 135 in depth interviews in 6 countries, and 8 focus group discussions in 5 countries were carried out for identifications and evaluation of the potential applications in the agri-food chain in the Smart Food Awareness area. Privacy was seen as a key function of the FI. The majority of the potential application ideas were rated as applicable to ensure improved awareness for the food chain members. There is a need for systematic explanation of the new enabling functions of the FI to the potential business users in a user-friendly way to foster the identification of new application opportunities. In some cases there is a difference between the priorities set by them and the behaviour of the consumers

What Can We Learn from Best Practices Regarding Food Chain Transparency?

This paper reports on food chain transparency. The research specifically aims to investigate best practices. Therefore, inductive research was conducted, starting with the identification of best practices. Further, underlying patterns were investigated to derive hypotheses and to develop a theoretical framework. These were confronted with literature findings which resulted in the validation of the hypotheses and the theoretical framework. Overall it can be concluded that several types of food chain transparency exist, whereas the different types represent a hierarchy of transparency domains, and that the basis mainly applies to information quality. In addition, it is shown that performance indicators measure directly or indirectly the success of transparency