Table Of ContentEdited by
Emel Aktas · Michael Bourlakis
Food Supply
Chains in Cities
Modern Tools for
Circularity and
Sustainability
Food Supply Chains in Cities
Emel Aktas • Michael Bourlakis
Editors
Food Supply Chains
in Cities
Modern Tools for Circularity
and Sustainability
Editors
Emel Aktas Michael Bourlakis
School of Management School of Management
Cranfield University Cranfield University
Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-34064-3 ISBN 978-3-030-34065-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34065-0
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Foreword
Keeping the world’s city dwellers well nourished becomes an ever-greater
logistical challenge. The proportion of the global population living in
urban areas is expected to rise from just over a half to two-thirds over the
next 30 years. Meanwhile the chains supplying our bourgeoning towns
and cities continue to lengthen and diversify as consumers are offered,
and conditioned to expect, an expanding range of fresh produce all year
round. The pervasive adoption of just-in-time replenishment across the
food distribution networks that supply our cities has driven down inven-
tory levels, making them more vulnerable and less resilient. Within cities,
food distribution is being gradually transformed by consumers switching
to online grocery retailing and the home delivery of ready-cooked meals.
As their diets change, and will have to change more radically to meet
greenhouse gas emission targets, food supply chains in and around cities
will need to be reconfigured. Their management will also require re-
engineering to minimise the shocking levels of food waste, food poverty
and malnutrition that one finds side-by-side in many major cities. It is
not hyperbole to say that the quality of billions of people’s health and
well-being depends on food supply chains at the urban level being effec-
tively planned and managed. This in turn requires a substantial research
effort to find new and improved ways of delivering vast quantities of food
efficiently and reliably to urban populations.
v
vi Foreword
This book successfully showcases some of the recent studies that have
been done on this vitally important subject. It illustrates the thematic,
methodological and geographical breadth of the research currently under-
way. The chapter authors address many different aspects of the subject
including food security, supply chain collaboration, the digitalisation of
food logistics, the optimised routing of food deliveries, the creation of
food hubs, the development of new reverse logistics networks to maxi-
mise the recycling of food waste and the costs and benefits of ‘vertical
farming’ within urban areas. Many of the studies are linked by a common
interest in promoting the long-term sustainability of food distribution.
In the course of their research the authors have deployed many different
approaches and techniques and drawn data from a variety of sources,
thereby setting a good example to future researchers in this field. The
have also provided an invaluable service in reviewing the extensive litera-
ture that has already emerged at the interface between food distribution,
supply chain management and city logistics.
The book’s geographical coverage is particularly impressive as it focuses
on cities in five continents and in countries at very different levels of eco-
nomic development. The cities themselves, such as Athens, Istanbul,
New York, Sao Paulo, Beijing and Beirut, vary enormously in their size,
structure, wealth and food supply systems, giving the reader a sense of the
extent to which business and policy innovations need to be adapted to
local circumstances. There will clearly be no-one-size-fits-all in the
upgrading of food supply chains to meet the culinary needs of the next
generation of urban dwellers.
Kühne Logistics University Alan McKinnon
Hamburg, Germany
Preface
We are excited to present you this edited volume on food supply chains
in cities. Our interest in food supply chains dates several decades, includ-
ing projects on agricultural supply chains, food retail, and food distribu-
tion. We have decided to edit this volume on food supply chain
management with specific focus on urban environments owing to the
increasing urbanisation and the permanent need to feed the populations
that reside in our cities. At the time of completing this project, the popu-
lation projections suggest that we will have 8.5 billion people living on
Earth by 2030 and 9.7 billion by 2050 (United Nations, 2019). Since
urban areas are anticipated to grow with increasing population, we face
the challenge of making our cities sustainable and food supply chains
play a key role in addressing this challenge. The Sustainable Development
Goal 11 is dedicated to making cities and human settlements inclusive,
safe, resilient, and sustainable and the reader will find several papers in
the edited volume that are aligned with this goal.
We open the book with a chapter entitled ‘Towards inclusive food sup-
ply chains’ authored by Virva Toumala. This chapter addresses the grow-
ing concern around food security, highlighting the links between food
supply chain management and urban food security. Synthesising the lit-
erature, Virva concludes five themes that affect urban food security: Rural
bias, urban political ecology, urban poverty, food supply chain manage-
ment, and food retail. Food security indicators are grouped under dietary
vii
viii Preface
diversity, consumption behaviour, experiential measures, and self-
assessment measures. Conclusions pave the way for future research on
reducing urban food insecurity, resilient food supply chains, and micro
retailers specifically in developing countries.
The second chapter is entitled ‘An Economic and Environmental
Comparison of Conventional and Controlled Environment Agriculture
(CEA) Supply Chains for Leaf Lettuce to US Cities’ and it is authored by
Charles F Nicholson, Kale Harbick, Miguel I Gómez, Neil S Mattson.
The chapter addresses an increasingly important area of vertical farming
unravelling implications towards reducing food miles and food waste,
depleting lower resources, and increasing accessibility to fresh produce in
cities. The authors build a simulation model that integrates economic
and environmental considerations into a comparison of lettuce supply
chains: field-grown, greenhouse-grown, and plant factory-grown. Key
conclusions suggest that just because the produce is grown in or near cit-
ies, it does not necessarily mean that it is more environmentally-friendly.
Total economic and environmental costs should be considered when
making investment decisions.
The third chapter, authored by Markus Rabe, Moritz Poeting, Astrid
Klueter, is entitled ‘Evaluating the Benefits of Collaborative Distribution
with Supply Chain Simulation’. Investigating the urban food distribu-
tion networks, the authors use simulation to identify the location of an
urban consolidation centre that will be used by multiple manufacturers
collaboratively to ship goods to retailers in cities. Using primary data
from Athens, Greece, the authors evaluate the impact of collaborative
transport practices on the number of deliveries, establishing the reduc-
tion in environmental and social indicators such as traffic congestion,
noise, and emissions. Future work suggests investigating different types
of transport vehicles such as electric vans or e-cargo bikes to fulfil the
last mile.
The fourth chapter investigates a typical urban distribution problem:
vehicle routing with simultaneous pick-up and deliveries. Authored by
Mustafa Cimen, Cagri Sel, Mehmet Soysal, the chapter is entitled ‘An
Approximate Dynamic Programming Approach for A Routing Problem
with Simultaneous Pick-Ups and Deliveries in Urban Areas’ and incorpo-
rates a reality of urban environments, time-dependent vehicle speeds,
Preface ix
into modelling. A state-of-the-art literature review informs a real-life case
study from one of the most crowded cities in Europe: Istanbul, with a
population of 15 million residents as of 2017. The authors provide a suc-
cinct synthesis of the literature around sustainability and green supply
chain management applicable to planning and scheduling problems,
inventory management, lot-sizing, and production-distribution prob-
lems. The authors propose an approximate dynamic programming-based
algorithm for vehicle routing of a soda manufacturer to reduce the dis-
tance travelled and the corresponding carbon emissions.
The fifth chapter is entitled ‘The Role of Informal and Semi-Formal
Waste Recycling Activities in a Reverse Logistics Model of Alternative
Food Networks’ and it is authored by Luis Kluwe de Aguiar and Louise
Manning. Introducing a hierarchy of the waste sector, the authors discuss
the barriers to participating in urban waste management. Coupling the
literature with a case study from Brazil, the authors develop alternative
business models for municipal solid waste management considering not
only economic but also social impact of the model. As a case study, they
investigate the reverse logistics network for cooking oil and sow the eco-
nomic gains to stakeholders involved.
The sixth chapter is entitled ‘Shortening the supply chain for local
organic food in Chinese cities’ and, herewith, we turn our attention to
local organic food provision with a case from China. The authors
Pingyang Liu and Neil Ravenscroft investigate the elements of alternative
food networks and find out how local food supply chains operate under
immature markets. An interesting aspect of this work is the impact of
new digital technologies on enabling farmers access new markets. The
chapter provides comparisons with Western food systems and draws les-
sons for circularity and sustainability of food supply chains. Future
research should investigate new instances of internet-enabled tools and
how they intermediate the relationship between farmers and consumers.
Luciana Marques Vieira and Daniele Eckert Matzembacher investigate
the role of digital business platforms in reducing food waste in the sev-
enth chapter entitled ‘How digital business platforms can reduce food
losses and waste?’. Underpinning one of the key reasons for food waste,
the lack of coordination among the members of the food supply chain,
the authors discuss the potential of digital business platforms in reducing
x Preface
food losses and waste. Interviews with 28 stakeholders including produc-
ers, cooperatives, and governmental agencies suggested that these plat-
forms can connect production and consumption and create a new market
for food that would otherwise be discarded. One of the key conclusions
is related to consumer awareness around food waste and digital platforms
that can help reduce waste so that sufficient demand is generated for
these emerging actors to survive in the food chain.
We then shift our focus to feeding students in Chap. 8, entitled ‘The
Role of Food Hubs in Enabling Local Sourcing for School Canteens’,
authored by Laura Palacios-Argüello; Iván Sanchéz-Díaz; Jesús González-
Feliu; Natacha Gondran. In this chapter, the authors examine food hubs
to serve school canteens within the broad discipline of institutional cater-
ing and propose design suggestions for these food hubs to increase local
and organic products offered to schools. Combining qualitative and
quantitative data, the authors classify food hubs in line with attributes
identified from the literature: stakeholder focus, structure, and owner-
ship, logistics functions, and commercial services. Then they solved vehi-
cle routing problems to distribute food from food hubs to school canteens
in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region in France. Their proposed food hub
allocation resulted in 25% reduction in distance travelled.
In a similar theme, João Roberto Maiellaro, João Gilberto Mendes dos
Reis, Laura-Vanessa Palacios-Arguello, Fernando Juabre Muçouçah,
Oduvaldo Vendrametto investigate food distribution from local farms to
schools and, subsequently, Chap. 9 is entitled ‘Food Distribution in
School Feeding Programmes in Brazil’. Using Geographical Information
System data on Mogi das Cruzes, Brazil, the authors established the cur-
rent operating conditions and proposed new operating principles that
minimised cost of transportation. Their proposed solution meant that
74% of the schools served in Mogi das Cruzes were within 5 km of a farm.
In the final chapter entitled ‘A Descriptive Analysis of Food Retailing
in Lebanon: Evidence from a Cross-Sectional Survey of Food Retailers’,
Rachel A. Bahn and Gumataw K. Abebe draw our attention to supermar-
kets and their competition with traditional food retailers from a country
with limited evidence on the extent and the process of supermarket pen-
etration. Reporting information collected from 49 food retailers in
Lebanon, the authors conclude that there is no clear evidence of a pattern
