scholarly journals Evaluation of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Operating in Short Supply Chains Within Slovak School Programmes

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Norbert Floriš ◽  
Pavol Schwarcz

Abstract Despite of reduction of its share on the gross domestic product, agriculture remains a branch generating job opportunities in rural areas. However, through more intensive farming procedures, it puts a pressure on environment and sustainability of agricultural production and prolongs the distance of distributed goods. Reduction of the mentioned impacts is possible through shortening the food supply chain subsequently resulting in increase of local sale, demand for local services and increase of labour market, putting an emphasis on support of small and medium – sized enterprises and their economic viability improvement. This paper evaluates the performance of small and medium enterprises and micro-enterprises which applied for the support and supplied and distributed fruits, vegetables, milk and milk products to kindergartens and primary schools within the School Fruits and Vegetables and the School Milk programme. We suppose that through supplying local schools they contributed to the food supply chain shortening.

Author(s):  
Metin Çalik

There is evidence local farming systems and short supply chains have more impact on local economies than on long supply chains and have significant impacts on sustaining local employment in rural areas. Short supply chains focus on meeting consumer demands for local products in a guaranteed manner, strengthen local economies, improve carbon footprint, and contribute to food safety, access to natural and healthy nutrition, and sustainability of small producers and their businesses. In this research, case study and interview methods have been applied to evaluate environmental, social, and economic risks for short food supply chain. This chapter reveals decision-making process through accounting in a more regular, consistent, and integrated way by including environmental and economic information which aims to balance human and environmental needs within the framework of the European Union Short Food Supply Chain Policy.


IDS Bulletin ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayako Ebata ◽  
Nicholas Nisbett ◽  
Stuart Gillespie

Measures to slow down the spread of Covid-19 have had profound effects on the food and nutrition security of poor and marginalised households and communities. This article provides an overview of the effects of Covid-19 on food systems across low- and middle-income countries using resilience and political economy lenses, before proposing approaches to build back resilient and equitable food systems. First, future interventions need to target structural issues that limit people’s agency in accessing nutritious and diverse food and production capital. Second, local innovation systems and institutions require investment to create a market environment that benefits domestic (small and medium) enterprises and agri‑food supply chain workers without jeopardising the environment. Third, interventions need to be informed by a diverse set of opinions that include the voices of the most marginalised.


2009 ◽  
pp. 25-42
Author(s):  
Roberta Raffaelli ◽  
Lorena Coser ◽  
Geremia Gios

- Experiences of short food supply chain: an explorative research in the province of Trento In the recent years there has been an increasing interest in the scientific literature for the so-called "Alternative Food Networks" which try to redefine the relationship between producers and consumers. Particularly interesting is the short food supply chain which allows both producers to get back some added value and consumers to have better food "with the farmers' face on it". Moreover, some part of the literature stressed that a shorter food supply chain promotes the rise of a new and more territorially based rural development. The investigation approach has been mainly sociological or geographical and mostly based on case studies. Little attention has been devoted to quantify the involved farmers' population. Since shorter food supply chains are becoming increasingly present in the Italian market, the aim of the paper is to contribute to deepen the knowledge about these experiences, starting from the specific context of the Autonomous Province of Trento. First of all, a census of the empirical variety of short food supply chains has been made. In addition to three farmer's markets, one box scheme (Biocesta) and other similar initiatives, farmers open their farms to consumers and visitors. The integration of three different databases allowed us to estimate the number of farms involved in the short supply chain. It represents the 12,8% of the full time farms. In order to shed light on structural conditions, economic performance and farmers' perceptions, we surveyed a convenience sample of 36 farms involved in the most innovative forms of short food supply chain. The surveyed farms are of small dimensions; the farmers are well educated and they are fully involved in the short food supply chain. Most part of the farms is highly diversified: the average number of products is 4.4 and the diversification is strengthened trough some processing. Only 28% of the sample sells the whole production through the short supply chain: this confirms that the major part of farms does not abandon the conventional system when opting for a shorter supply chain. Investigating the motivations that draw farmers to move towards a shorter supply chain shows that a better valorisation of their products represents the most important one. Nevertheless, other non-monetary reasons enter into the decision and gain top ranking positions such the direct contact with consumers and the enhancement of professional competences. The option for a shorter supply chain seems to have very interesting consequences. Actually, it pushed the 72% of farms to increase product diversification; it induced some farms to switch to organic production, to recover unusual vegetables and antique fruit cultivars, to pay greater attention to the landscape, to offer new services inside the farm and to strength the relations with other farms and the territory. These results support the idea that the short food supply chain enhances the multifunctional role of farms.JEL Codes: Q12, Q13Key words: short food supply chain, farmers' survey, structural and economic characteristics, Trentino


2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-47
Author(s):  
N.Arunfred N.Arunfred ◽  
◽  
Dr.D.Kinslin Dr.D.Kinslin

New Medit ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marinos Markou ◽  
Andreas Stylianou ◽  
Marianthi Giannakopoulou ◽  
Georgios Adamides

Unfair Trading Practices (UTPs) between businesses in the food supply chain have a significant impact on the various stakeholders involved, and on the environment. So far, no attempt has been made at the Member State level for the identification of UTPs in the food supply chain and their impact on the relevant stakeholders. This study drew on this gap and attempted to identify the UTPs that exist in the Cypriot food supply chain, assess their impact on the involved stakeholders and provide guidelines that will assist the transposition of EU relevant Directive to the national law. To achieve this goal, the study was based on a quantitative survey of a representative sample of businesses using a specific questionnaire. The results showed that particular UTPs do appear in the food supply chain with a different frequency, while the majority of businesses have been victims of UTPs in the last five years. Notably, the estimated cost of UTPs as a percentage of the business annual turnover is considered important ranging from 5.7% for retailers to 31.9% for farmers. Thus, most participants agree that UTPs in the agricultural food sector should be regulated by national legislation. We argue that the national legislation for UTPs should be a mix of policies that integrate private, administrative and judicial methods of monitoring and enforcement. Policy and decision makers should seek to reinforce the role and the bargaining power of small businesses in the food supply chain. This might be accomplished through the development of efficient producers’ organizations, short food supply chains, interbranch organizations and strategic partnerships.


Author(s):  
Zhaohui Wu ◽  
Madeleine Elinor Pullman

Food supply chain management is becoming a critical management and public policy agenda. Climate change, growing demand, and shifting patterns of food production, delivery, and consumption have elicited a series of new challenges, such as food security, safety, and system resiliency. This chapter first introduces the typical players in a food supply chain and examines the global food system characterized by consolidation and industrialization. It then discusses some critical topics of the sustainable food supply chain that aim to address these challenges. These topics include traceability, transparency, certification and standards, and alternatives to industrialized food systems, including cooperatives, community-supported agriculture, and roles of small and medium-sized growers in regenerative agriculture. The chapter ends with a discussion of several important emerging logistics management topics, including last-mile delivery, new technology, and cold chain management.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1223
Author(s):  
Ilianna Kollia ◽  
Jack Stevenson ◽  
Stefanos Kollias

This paper provides a review of an emerging field in the food processing sector, referring to efficient and safe food supply chains, ’from farm to fork’, as enabled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). The field is of great significance from economic, food safety and public health points of views. The paper focuses on effective food production, food maintenance energy management and food retail packaging labeling control, using recent advances in machine learning. Appropriate deep neural architectures are adopted and used for this purpose, including Fully Convolutional Networks, Long Short-Term Memories and Recurrent Neural Networks, Auto-Encoders and Attention mechanisms, Latent Variable extraction and clustering, as well as Domain Adaptation. Three experimental studies are presented, illustrating the ability of these AI methodologies to produce state-of-the-art performance in the whole food supply chain. In particular, these concern: (i) predicting plant growth and tomato yield in greenhouses, thus matching food production to market needs and reducing food waste or food unavailability; (ii) optimizing energy consumption across large networks of food retail refrigeration systems, through optimal selection of systems that can be shut-down and through prediction of the respective food de-freezing times, during peaks of power demand load; (iii) optical recognition and verification of food consumption expiry date in automatic inspection of retail packaged food, thus ensuring safety of food and people’s health.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document