4
The Sociological Basis for Food Security
4.1 Challenges and Solutions
Using the analysis of the food system and food supply chains developed in the previous chapters, we have established what food security is and why we should care about it. The following three central themes have emerged as presenting the greatest challenges to the food supply chain:
- The increasing reliance on food trade and trade agreements to develop food security means that sociopolitical attributes of increasing the investment and infrastructural drivers are just as important as maintaining innovations associated with new technologies entering supply chains.
- Using localised food consumption to provide sustainable solutions to food security will enhance consumer knowledge of foods and qualities of foods.
- The requirement to deal with the finite nature of the resources we use to produce food is crucial at all stages of the food supply chain. Minimising waste is something that must happen; it represents some of the greatst challenges facing the food security debate and can be viewed as ‘the elephant in the room’ we can no longer ignore.
We have now developed these three challenges, and we present the opportunities to provide solutions that we might see being applied to obtain global food security in the future. Food security is not a recent demand of humanity, and the current food security issues emerged in the world press during the so-called food-price spikes that occurred between 2005 and 2008 and occupied the thoughts of many policymakers. The drivers of these spikes were many-fold and included transitions in affluence and the demand for livestock protein products along with the diversification of agricultural products into chemical and fuel sectors. The issues were those of transitions in lifestyle quality within populations, and as with many transitional movements, a new worldview is eventually reached. The new worldview has been that the opportunity of sustainable intensification of food production has emerged whereby crop and livestock production is maximised for a given area of land, and this is achieved sustainably by utilising the most efficient use of resources available to do this.1 This world-view needs to be integrated with manufacturing, processing, retailing and consumer use of foods so that maximum efficiency of the use of resources per unit of production is realised.
This situation is very different to the worldview of the 1970s on food security where there was a rightful desire to remove hunger, and as Indira Gandhi, the then Prime Minister of India analysed it, to obtain ‘a world without want’. Gandhi put forward the issue of food security backed by social–political change as one that would remove the scourge of hunger and starvation globally and provide a fair standard of living for every global citizen.2 The essays that come from this period did drive the humanitarian need for food security into the public domain and changed our view of the food system for ever. They highlighted the role of natural events and disasters in creating famine because the centres of poverty and hunger were associated with river deltas and valleys, where changes to seasonal rain and irrigation resulted in flood and drought events that proved disastrous for maintaining food security by agricultural production. It is useful to consider this viewpoint because the natural events and disasters still occur 40 years later, but international cooperation and distribution technologies have ameliorated the impacts of these events and the food security threats in the twenty-first century are different. Climate change now dominates the projected changes in land use, and the impact is far different in that the effort to tackle climate and environment change has become coordinated internationally because the impacts will affect all nations.
The impact of hunger and the scale of natural disasters have not decreased since the essay of Gandhi in 1975, but the access to technology and information has transformed how we are able to tackle natural disasters whether they are prolonged drought, delayed monsoon, or flood. The definition of want has always been recognised as variable, and we can assess food security as a balance of nutrients that will provide health and well-being at the most basic level of sustaining a healthy life. However, this scenario is made far more complex because of the social and cultural influences on food consumption and the preferences of taste in populations. In her 1975 essay, Gandhi defined three wants that drive demand, and they are the following:
[To cover the] ‘shortage of the essentials’ for existence such as minimum nutrition, clothing and housing
[To develop the existence of education and recreation that] ‘give meaning and purpose to life’.
[To obtain extra resources that] ‘advertising proclaims as necessary’ to a good living.
The approaches to tackling food security in the 1970s opened up worldviews on fairness and justice, with assessments of land availability and other resource availability being discussed internationally. The developed world had more of everything, notably more energy consumption and available land use; this type of assessment was the infancy of the environmental footprinting movement, which developed a range of illustrative methods to describe how much resources is embodied in a particular product or citizen. This approach has clearly shown inequalities in the distribution of global resources, but we have begun to solve where we should start to respond to reducing inequality. The past is enlightening and it can be said progress has been made by integrating new technologies and information sources as they have become available.
Thus, the development of a global food security strategy has evolved from many ideas and theories. The worldview described by Gandhi was one of aspiring to want and possibly want more than was necessary. We might consider this worldview proof that the Malthusian projections were right and population did indeed outstrip the potential for natural resources to supply enough for survival. The worldview of Reverend Thomas Malthus was established at the beginning of the industrial revolution in the United Kingdom, when the first industrial cities were developing and population transitions were evident with regard to lifestyles and wealth creation. The lifestyle transitions were written about in a similar way that they are now and were then being observed and communicated by journalists and writers such as Charles Dickens.3 This was an age where Newtonian laws of science were being applied to industry and economics. Notably, the French financial system was being influenced by Jacques Turgot, who reported progress in terms of straight line predictions to illustrate growth and wealth creation.4 This was a time of science and projections that provided solutions for supplying growing populations with access to perceived unlimited resources required for wealth and health; limits were neither conceivable or reachable in the world-view of that time.
4.2 Free Trade Transitions into Sustainability
The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were a time of industrial development, the assessment of the application of science and it is no wonder the socially aware such as the Reverend Thomas Malthus saw chinks in this straight line projection worldview of progress. The Malthusian worldview was one that dominated global food policy in the 1970s with the publication of Dr Paul Ehrlich's Population Time Bomb. The limits to growth were well appreciated and extremely well communicated by a growing environmental movement that was obtaining ground in government and international policy. Notably the work of the Norwegian Prime Minister Dr Gro Harlem Brundtland changed our views of growth and natural resource use for ever. The very issue of sustainable development had now entered our thinking when considering the use of natural resources globally. The fragility of the global food system was predictable and characterised by experts and scientists and the problems have been well defined so that we have an opportunity to provide solutions. The emergence of defining different types of wealth creation and economic growth that went beyond the economic wealth and the straight line projections of Turgot gained pace with the global interpretations of sustainable development and wealth put forward by the environmental movement. Paul Hawken and the Lovins's aired the idea of natural capital using a sustainability tenet that you cannot continue manufacturing consumer products such as food if your resource base is being depleted.5 There will come a time when either you cannot make more because there are no ingredients left or you have to make less because you need to make what is left last longer. Lovins also raised the issue of producing differently, and this thinking coincided with John Elkington's views on sustainability, that is, there are economic capital, social capital, and natural capital components associated with sustainable wealth creation. Even national treasuries and central banks were using this language of sustainability where the limits to growth were incorporated into economic models and risk assessment; it was no longer a case of growth being solely focused on economic capital. This established a new view of accounting where companies were not only assessed on economic profit or loss reported quarterly or annually, but also for the social and natural capital held by a company.
Indeed, much business practice is still set on short-term investments that provide fast return to investors and shareholders; this is often in conflict with sustainable approaches where social and natural capital is built into the growth of economic capital. What is more, is it is difficult to measure social capital and place this into a sustainability index that can represent the whole triple bottom line. Thus, while it seems intuitive to measure performance in terms of sustainably, it is difficult to communicate and proven impossible to measure for many organisations. No wonder the taking up of sustainability thinking took a while; the standardisation of measuring environmental performance has been stimulated by the development of international standards for product footprints and environmental management systems. This revolution has been driven by the food industry and the food supply chain, it has not been a slow starter because of prior experience with food assurance and traceability schemes.
4.3 Increasing Food Supplies Have Been a Major Achievement since 1975, but There Is Increased Resource Nationalism Evident by the Emergence of ‘National Interests in a Shrinking World’
Development of modern agricultural programmes have transformed production since 1975, and the impact of supply chain is beginning to be realised, with food traceability and assurance scheme emergence. Growth strategies and resource constraint are beginning to be understood because the Green Revolution was ‘a mixed picture’ where technologies were deployed into markets to increase production and economic livelihoods. However, we now know that the environmental and social consequences of changing food supply are as important as applying new technologies that change production. In his book, Earth Odyssey, published in 1999, Mark Hertsgaard details his round-the-world journey started in 1991, providing a reflection on industrial and agricultural development with a foresight view of new developments that include environmental issues so that we might consider what the future holds for us.6 A stark reminder of the want of the human condition at basic levels is the narrative Hertsgaard provides in his book for Sudan and the areas of the Darfur region, which was torn apart by civil war in the late 1980s. The plea of the chapter on the Darfur region, ‘we are still here’, describes the subsequent use of natural resources following political breakdown until all that exists is famine and an almost total loss of hope. The organisations that still exist in this situation Hertsgaard describes are the Red Cross, the UN Food Programme, and the Catholic Church and the Sudanese citizens in the narrative state despondently that ‘we are still here’. This provides a stark reminder to nations who can contribute aid and assistance to do so even though technolgies and distribution infrastructure exist; there must be the political will, trust, and leadership to alleviate such suffering.
Strong leadership and trust have made significant impact on the future management of our planets natural resources; we have discussed this is terms of the people who have shaped our current understanding of sustainability. The evidence obtained from previous production and consumption trends make it clear that food businesses will largely determine what 9 billion consumers of the 2050 world will buy, use, and waste. What is not clear is how 9 billion consumers will feel about their lives or the products they consume. That is, the qualitative components of the food supply chain are becoming less well charactised than the sheer scale of LCA, energy balance, and EMS data now available. Much of these data are peer reviewed, that is, reviewed by independent panels of experts; it is also often freely available as open-access publication. Qualitative data regarding product use are often commercially sensitive and private data are owned by the producer, manufacturing, processing, and retailing components of the supply chain. Indeed, retailing has become extremely reliant of consumer data that are obtained from sensory panels, enabling products to be benchmarked against others so that product claims can be made and price points set.
These two worldviews of the corporate and consumer are documented by commentators and have become an important consideration in obtaining sustainable options in the use of planetary renewable and non-renewable resources. Humankind must find new ways of determining how appropriate corporate and consumer power in supply chains is used for different types of products. The solutions are often presented in broad assessments and scorecards of sustainability that are too complex or are not appropriate for business and consumer application. The requirement is clear to us: there is a need for an assessment of sustainability for business and consumers; if this is not achieved, it is unlikely that the sustainable goals policymakers set will be realised. The outcome of unsuccessful assessments of the sustainability for both product supply and consumption is that policies will fail because of a lack of will to engage both business and consumer requirements together.
A consequence of delivering the values associated with culture and society we have come to expect is the removal of our lifestyles from nature, the production of foods and even the preparation of meals. There is now an expectation that at least 6 billion of the 9 billion people in our 2050 world will make the transition from rural to urban lifestyles that are associated with different cultural and social needs that often result in the distancing of people from food production. Businesses need to know what will keep the human conditions of communities communicating with each other and taking part in cohesive social functions. This needs to be achieved by communities while still remaining tuned into the food systems they utilise, otherwise food and other services derived from nature become a distant and abstract theme in their lives. A typical illustration of what we are becoming is not necessarily one of good human condition, because it may well be an obese individual, burdened with urban life, who is not necessarily happier than their ancestors were, or an individual who simply does not consume enough to live healthily. Indeed, it can be considered that we are manifestly more miserable than our ancestors, and economists will often cite the Kuznets curve, which presents the ‘it will get worse before it gets better’ scenario. This is where basic needs for survival evolve from a minimum requirement into the more aesthetic needs of individuals through wealth creation.
Understanding future customers, where they are, and how they utilise products is an important goal of today's foods business if we are to achieve the elusive goal of sustainability. It is clear that while labelling and accreditation systems are essential to individual product specification, they will not necessarily enlighten or change consumption behaviour to significantly change how we will utilise global natural resources. What is clear is the need to understand supply chain functions, and this can be achieved working from first principals. Knowing what our resource base is, where food products come from and how they are made is a critical requirement for sustainable consumption. Several research programmes have mapped natural resources globally that are our basis for supplying a future for 9 billion people; the volumes of these resources required to maintain future lifestyles have so far been rarely limited by localised conditions because of efficient transport and distribution systems. This is specifically the case with regard to land use and agricultural production; researchers have further quantified resources required to maintain current levels of consumption for the 2050 world where there will be 9 billion consumers.
Ultimately, the decisions inciting these transformations will depend on leadership credentials of CEOs and chief officers in companies. Since the 1960s, movements regarding environment and sustainability have highlighted issues concerning resource limitation and augmented public debate. However, a more recent and a likely to be far more powerful means of augmenting action has been a more open society with regard to the access to information consumers have on production and consumption of products associated with specific lifestyles. Indeed, we can begin to question whether the consumer will have a more dominant role in determining sustainability in the 2050 world, and there are areas of the food system where consumer trends will drive changes in supply chains. The world protein budget is critical to the future development of the food supply, and the location of where that protein comes from is critical. Indeed, it is the indicator of dietary transitions in the world, as already discussed, there are significant protein and calorific gaps in diet with regard to quantity consumed. The quality of diet is often defined by protein content, and we have already identified how the evolution of human taste preferences and protein metabolism has determined how we choose a portion of food or a balanced meal.
The data presented in Table 4.1 demonstrate the challenge that faces the global food system because we obtain protein and calories from a wide range of sources in different locations. These sources of biomass are delivered in the supply chain as ingredients that are manufactured into foods; foods are created by manufacturers or consumers as recipes and portions of meals. We will now use case studies to show how understanding the supply chain can integrate with consideration of agricultural operations, and this is essential to developing robust food security by improving nutrition and reducing food waste. There are many examples of the development of new food ingredients that do not fully consider how consumers use them or experience them. For example, we have seen that the development of golden rice was established to deal with an extremely important health impact, and sensory tests on the actual product were not carried out until development of the variety was advanced. Thus, the product was not characterised as a consumer product by consumers for several years. Indeed, this is an outcome of developing advanced novel technologies, such as genetically engineered crops; the invention is often the least complex and expensive part of the development cycle, and there is a requirement for consumer risk assessment and toxicology assessment to be carried out. These types of development cycle will change, and we will see sensory trials of products or similar products being used to develop new foods from the beginning of the innovation or research cycle.7 Golden rice is not alone, and we must consider that most crop varieties have been developed with the focus of technologies solving a specific problem without structured research into how consumers may experience the final product. The focus of development has usually been to improved biomass yield or manufacturing efficiency.
Table 4.1. Global protein supply (FAOSTAT 2009 data): the components of global protein supply in terms of absolute production from agricultural primary products and their supply to individuals
Before we consider the ultimate part of the food supply chain, that is, where consumption of finished product occurs by the consumer, we must consider how we can support the measurement of sustainability across supply chains and the food system. The use of life cycle assessment (LCA) is central to these discussions because LCA formalises the measurement of inputs and outputs for each food supply chain function and provides the outputs in what can be described as sustainability criteria.8–11 LCA methods present opportunities because it is subjected to increasing internationalisation of assessment standards that will have significant impact on assuring product declarations and food safety.12 LCA methodology has therefore helped to revolutionise how food processors and manufacturers can investigate their supply chains and report their performance.13 LCA has evolved to become more suited to assessing the sustainability criteria of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), and this has resulted in the emergence of footprinting standards and the use of LCA in modular forms or simplified versions to investigate specific criteria, such as greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the carbon footprint methodologies.14 This approach is important because it is ultimately driven by the supply chain delivering what are likely to be more successful products. How this is assessed can vary depending on the modular form of LCA used or attributes assessed by footprinting, but data regarding consumer use will be critical in all assessments. LCA is often confused with the assessment of consumer behaviour and the use of FMCG, but it has nothing to do with consumer behaviours because the supply chain will respond to how products are consumed.
Currently, many LCA approaches overlook the value of understanding the role of consumer use of FMCGs in the continued development of new products. Manufacturers and processors are likely to benefit most from understanding these types of data because in supply chain terms, they sit between agricultural producers wanting the highest price for ingredients and retailers who want the lowest prices for customers in supply chains. Thus, they operate in a specific place in the food supply chain where the cost of resources such as energy, water, and materials is of critical importance to a business. This has resulted in the development of programmes of assessment, such as the carbon footprint international standard PAS 2050 (Publically Accessible Scheme 2050).15 The resulting guidelines on how to enable the use of LCA thinking in supply chains and companies has been stimulated by the development of ‘roadmaps’ by specific industrial sectors, such as the dairy- and livestock-producing arenas.16,17 These approaches enable practitioners in the food supply chain to begin to use LCA in a modular form and work to implement full LCA programmes as commercial demand develops. The LCA arena has become more user-friendly and commercially applicable by the use of footprinting methods for FMCGs and the need for manufacturers to understand how consumers utilise products.
Examples of LCA approaches for FMCG supply chains can be demonstrated for several food product categories if data concerned with supply chain functions are available. Energy balance is a methodology that is an LCA approach, and it assesses the energy inputs and outputs of a system in terms of the efficiency at which energy is consumed to produce a product. It has provided important insights into manufacturing and processing operations, and it provides a very useful starting point for contemplating the complexities of the LCA, water footprint and carbon footprint of food products. Energy balance methods have been used very successfully to assess the efficiency of industrial nitrogen fixation, which can be viewed as the driver of much biomass production.18 Whereas product carbon footprints are guiding current trends in sustainability and are likely to lead to a further wave of innovations in the food supply chain, many organisations have difficulty in how to utilise sustainability criteria of products with respect to their customers. Energy balance cuts through this indecisiveness by immediately showing where energy costs can be reduced in supply chain functions.
4.4 A Demonstration of Energy Balance and LCA for Sugar Production in Europe
In many food supply chains, the agricultural production of ingredients is a key area of GHG reduction activity because of the use of nitrogen and fossil fuels that represent major sources of energy inputs that are associated with increasing GHG emissions. Farm management strategies that deliver environmentally sustainable outcomes are well known to growers because of the impact of the set-aside and stewardship schemes established in the late 1980s. How GHG emissions can be further reduced will provide farmers and growers with future challenges in maintaining production efficiency and profitability, and these must focus on the use of fossil fuels and nitrogenous fertilisers. The sugar supply chain in Europe offers an important case study because sugar is produced from sugar beet, and in the United Kingdom, there is only one processor of sugar beet into white sugar, British Sugar plc.19 This means the supply chain is well understood from farm production to retailing, and it provides an important demonstration of the value of energy balance.20
Farm practices that conserve GHG emissions are not as high profile or visible as manufacturing operations because they cannot be metered directly and are more complex in that GHG emissions are extremely dependent on annual variations in weather.21 Even with these extremely variable attributes, we can use LCA approaches as energy balances to determine the sustainability of inputs, such as nitrogen fertiliser. Furthermore, established annual yield reports and weather trends allow us to project and standardise our analyses. With this in mind, we can begin to highlight fit-for-purpose actions farmers and growers can take in the sugar beet and other agricultural ingredient production supply chains to reduce GHG emissions for each growing season. The LCA and energy balance are methods developed by engineering companies in the 1970s, that have developed to become an international standards and the basis for undertaking a carbon footprint of products. The approaches take a whole system view of the supply chain, and it is grounded in the common sense that we do not get something for nothing. In this case, converting biomass into white sugar and co-products means there are energy transfers, and when that energy is transferred, it either becomes unusable or lower quality energy, such as steam or ‘low-grade’ heat within the production system. LCA and energy balance approaches identify where energy transfers occur and where energy might be recycled through the system to make the best use of it. This seems straightforward, but soon becomes complex because supply chains have many suppliers, different processes, and varying traceability.
The carbon footprint represents the embodied GHG emissions of a product across its lifecycle—from the production to the disposal phase (‘cradle to grave’)—and offers a convenient method for assessing GHG impacts across food supply chains. LCA methodology is used to calculate the product carbon footprint and a functional unit of the system or supply chain being analysed.10 The functional unit in the LCA and footprint of food products is typically a specified mass of product that is used by the consumer, such as a gram of white sugar. The carbon footprint and part of an LCA determines the total amount of GHGs associated with a given functional unit. In this case, the GHG emission reduction opportunities for the sugar beet supply chain before the factory may not be fully considered on the farm even though growers are expert in optimising the sugar beet production system. A convenient way of investigating the GHG emissions associated with sugar beet production is to understand the energy consumed during a typical growing season. Figure 4.1 shows the energy balance for sugar beet production obtained from 32 years of field trial data for eight independent cereal, potato, and sugar beet rotations on different farms in Germany.18 This German long-term study offers some important insights into sugar beet energy management on farms in that direct use of diesel by the grower makes up nearly 70% of the energy balance, and includes ploughing (22%), harrowing (7%), and harvesting (40%).22
Source: Data from Hülsbergen et al. (2001).
The energy balance shows us that the total energy input for sugar beet and other root crops such as potatoes is typically 25 GJ (giga-joules) per hectare and typical energy outputs of the sugar beet crop are 350 GJ per hectare with co-products included in this figure with white sugar yields. The energy output for only white sugar was typically 250 GJ. This represents a 10- to 14-fold increase in energy output due to efficient agronomic management, ensuring the sugar beet crop canopy captures as much solar energy as is possible during the growing season. There are important opportunities that need highlighting from the energy balance that result in lower GHG emissions and reduced production costs. It is notable that ploughing and seed-bed preparation have changed in recent years so that diesel consumption is reduced. The direct and indirect use of energy for the operations identify that at least 50% of the energy used for ploughing, harrowing, and harvesting is under the direct control of the farm through consumption of liquid fuel. This means improved efficiency and design of machinery and fuel consumption will have a significant impact on the farms sugar beet production energy balance. An important means to reduce fuel consumption is the consideration of minimal soil cultivations that reduce the need for plough cultivations and utilise discs and harrows only to produce a seed bed.
Of course, minimal cultivations may not be appropriate for all soils and weed management regimes, but there are often options to reduce field traffic and soil cultivation intensity across a cereal-beet rotations to reduce GHG emissions and increase profit margin. The development of cultivation machinery that combine discing, harrowing and pressing cultivations into a single or reduced pass for seed-bed preparation has had impacts on GHG emission and energy balance of sugar beet production that should be regularly measured and reported. The message from the energy balance here is to reduce ploughing and field traffic as much as possible because the benefits are both financial and environmental. Whereas minimal cultivation may reduce the energy consumption of seed-bed preparation, it is unlikely that there will be a minimal cultivation option for sugar beet harvesting. However, considering harvesting as a soil cultivation in the rotation is measurable, and the fact it is responsible for 40% of the energy consumed it should be accounted for in the benefit to the following crop. Thus, there are opportunities to reduce GHG emissions of soil cultivations, and using biodiesel will reduce them further because biofuels recycle GHG emissions through the farm because the fuel is both grown and combusted on farm, making fuel consumption close to carbon neutral.23 A further benefit of minimal soil cultivations is it will stabilise the soil organic matter content, increasing the amount of carbon fixed in the soil, which has been the thrust of soil carbon conservation programmes in the United States, where minimal cultivations have transformed combinable crop production through the market entry of herbicide-resistant crops and machinery innovations. Research reported by Rothamsted Research shows that up to 10.4 million tonnes carbon per year could be fixed by UK agricultural soils using minimal cultivations, which is equivalent to some 2% of the national GHG emission inventory. What is crucial to understand is that these energy efficiencies and GHG conservation measures can be passed on to the food supply chain and eventual consumer use of a product, such as white sugar.
A similar scenario exists with the use of nitrogenous fertilisers, whereby changes in the management of the production of biomass that result in benefits can be passed onto other food supply chain functions. The use of nitrogenous fertiliser accounts for 30–35% of the energy balance for crop production on farms because of the energy required to fix nitrogen in nature or by the industrial Haber Bosch-derived processes. The energy required to fix nitrogen to ammonia has decreased to near the theoretical minimum required, and it is therefore important that we find new routes to conserving energy in the farm system.24 It is the fixation of industrial nitrogen that supplements natural nitrogen fixation, and Smil identifies that 24% of all nitrogen consumed is industrially fixed, so we cannot do without it, but it does come with impacts that increasingly require further optimisation of nitrogen use.25 The energy consumed for nitrogenous fertiliser, whether as mineral (principally ammonium nitrate and urea) or animal manure, is approximately equal because we must consider the energy consumed to produce, transport and spread animal manures.
The energy, nutrient, and GHG balances will always show us that we can never get something for nothing, and in the case of crop nitrogen fertilisation, we have another factor, that is, the complex relationship between effective nitrogen fertiliser use and the yield and quality of the sugar beet crop. Increasing nitrogen fertiliser will increase biomass yield, but there will be a point where the quality of sugar beet is compromised because of the impact of increased molassogenicity of the beet. This is caused by nitrogenous compounds in the beet that increase as nitrogen fertiliser is increased, with the resulting reduction in white sugar yield during processing and manufacture.26 Similar types of relationship between nitrogen fertilisation and crop quality are observed for the following.27
- Bread wheat where increased nitrogen fertilisation improves protein content and bread making quality.
- Potato size and skin set can be influenced by different nitrogen fertilisation and determine different marketability, for example, small or salad and large or table potatoes.
- Malting barley where decreased nitrogen in the grain provides more suitable malt for beer making because there will be lower protein derived nitrogen in the beer produced. However, the presence of protein is important in producing foams that are associated with the consumer experience of beverages, such as beers and coffee.
As Smil (2002) explains, the energy required to manufacture mineral nitrogen fertilisers from industrially fixed ammonia are close to the minimum theoretically possible. This means that the management of factory emissions, the fertiliser supply chain, and farm use of mineral fertilisers are the only realistic options for significant GHG for energy balance or GHG emission savings to be made. The carbon footprinting of nitrogen fertiliser products has been reported with GrowHow UK Ltd Group of companies footprinting its nitrogen products with the carbon label standard (PAS 2050), and it is likely that other nitrogen manufacturers will follow.28 The important consideration here is that of the major energy input for the use of organic manures; the use of fuel to transport bulk manures is as important as those fuels consumed in soil cultivations. That is, reducing field traffic and the transport of materials, which result in reduced diesel consumption, will reduce the carbon footprint of nitrogenous fertilisers, and in combination with these efforts, we must consider the use of biofuels for farm operations so that GHGs are recycled within the farm system. Thus, transportation of products and ingredients has a significant impact on the sustainability criteria of FMCGs because fossil fuels are currently intensively consumed, meaning we can either change transportation fuel sources or optimise transport routing.
Transportation has been identified across supply chains as an area where improvement is often possible and needs to be integrated with improved product and manufacturing processes, as well as storage, wholesaling, and retail functions of the supply chain. The use of geographic tools offer solutions because they can help us plan for transport costs strategically and assess the energy balance, GHG emissions, and costs associated with transportation and other supply chain operations.
4.5 Carbon Footprinting for Food Manufacturers Begins to Offer a Sustainability Reporting Framework
The embodied GHG emissions (the ‘carbon footprint’) of a product across its lifecycle—from the production to the disposal phase (‘cradle to grave’), offers a convenient criterion for assessing GHG impacts and possible sustainability criteria of products across food supply chains. The method it is based on, LCA methodology, is used to calculate the product carbon footprint, and a functional unit of the system or supply chain is analysed so that the carbon footprint determines the total amount of GHGs associated with a given functional unit. PAS 2050 (2008) offers the potential for greater understanding of life cycle GHG emissions by the consumer within a context of making purchasing decisions between goods and services transparent with regard to GHG accounting. This suggests that carbon footprints of food products will be increasingly used by industry to report dietary criteria associated with health and social responsibility as well as GHG responsibility. That is, the more we eat them, the more GHG emissions result and, the more we waste, the more GHG emissions are consumed. They will not provide a total sustainability index for whole organisations or supply chains in the food system, but they will provide an important starting point in achieving the goal of accounting for sustainability criteria in supply chains.29 Indeed, the wider goal of developing indices that integrate consumption and sustainability criteria have been tested by food retail groups and represent a future challenge to food businesses (e.g. the Walmart Sustainability Index30). Recent research by the author and Iglo Food Group Ltd has shown that the use of meal planning and frozen foods can reduce food waste in the home.31 That is, appropriately preserved food enables consumption that results in less food waste. The study uses novel questionnaire methods that determine a food waste index which relates food preservation, meal planning, and amount of food waste associated with purchased foods. This study was achieved with a sample population of consumers trained for sensory panel analysis and recording food consumption attributes.
Protein supply is crucial to the future sustainability of the food system, and the major sources are currently cereals, pulses, and fish and livestock products. The role of other protein sources, such as those fermented from carbohydrate, is relatively unknown, and mycoprotein provides an important case study in reducing livestock product consumption while maintaining the protein content of meals that might be consumed in future.13 The future global protein supply market is uncertain with respect to maintaining sufficient protein supply for a global population that is projected to reach 9 billion in 2050, and this will have important impacts on product development and international trade. This is because of the increase of the more affluent purchasing in the economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China changing how protein is traded globally. While the impact of this affluent purchasing power has been described in terms of increased demand for livestock products, the issue of developing sufficient protein supply is clouded with many factors that are far more complex than a meat versus non-meat choice.32 Food consumption is a significant proportion of national GHG emission inventories that are reported for policy purposes, and in the United Kingdom, for example, the food and drink system is responsible for 195 million tonnes of GHG (CO2e) emissions per year; these are carbon dioxide equivalents and include all GHGs of current policy interest.33 Thus, using individual carbon footprints of products to assess the GHG consumption impact of the dietary behaviour of populations will be an important consideration for environmental policy that acts throughout the supply chain.
The analysis of the impact of food consumption at national scales with respect to reducing GHG emissions is still an emerging area, and actions that are likely to result in GHG conservation across the food supply chain are often untested. One such action may be a reduction in the consumption of livestock protein; while it is uncertain how changes in the consumption of livestock products will reduce GHG emission, it is increasingly clear they have an important role to play.34 The use of industrially synthesised or fermented proteins for human consumption offer an important option in determining what future protein supply may be; indeed, how the distribution of protein consumption, shown in Table 4.1, might look like in the future.
The development of mycoprotein is such a fermented protein, and it provides an important case study in protein sustainability here, with its story that starts with a collaborative partnership with the RHM Industries food group and Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1984 that formed Marlow Foods Ltd. This company was a mycoprotein manufacturer that developed the current 155-m3 scale air lift fermentation technology that grows Fusarium venenatum under strictly defined conditions in the United Kingdom. Harvesting of mycoprotein from fermenters can continue in steady-state continuous flow for up to six weeks. At this stage of manufacture, mycoprotein has the appearance of bread dough but lacks the elasticity associated with a bread wheat gluten mass. For the production of Quorn™, the branded product of mycoprotein, the mycoprotein is mixed with egg albumen, roasted barley malt extract, and water.
Mycoprotein does offer an alternative scenario to livestock proteins in that a high-quality protein is now available by fermenting glucose into protein providing an ingredient for food products that is 11% protein (w/v) containing all essential amino acids.35 The manufacturing and processing innovations associated with the development of mycoprotein has resulted in the Quorn, which includes shaped products, such as fillets, mince, and pieces, coated ready meal products and ready-to-eat deli style products. Quorn itself is produced by including 8–10% egg white protein to mycoprotein, bringing the protein content of Quorn to 14–16% w/w in finished products. There is significant interest in lowering the livestock product content of diet because of the health and environmental implications that have been outlined, and there is now a growing body of public advice that provides ways to decrease livestock product consumption. For example, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has developed the Livewell Diet, which proposes that small reductions in meat consumption per meal can lower the GHG impact of food consumption and promote healthier lifestyle.36 The global perspective for protein supply provides a requirement for national agencies to assess supply chain efficiency because increased protein demand pressures are currently largely dependent on feed and livestock production systems.
The carbon footprint calculated for mycoprotein and selected Quorn products provides an important demonstration of a company utilising sustainability criteria to explain the impact and benefits of using their products in meal by consumers. This has been guided by the requirements of PAS 2050: 2008, the Code of Good Practice for Product Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Reduction Claims (2008), and the Carbon Trust's Footprint Expert™ Guide. The development of the carbon footprint for food products is becoming relatively simple for manufacturers to undertake because the recording of supply chain data is usually undertaken by manufacturers as part of standard audit practice, and it is now becoming a case of converting this information into GHG emissions using published conversion factors. Whereas this activity used to be only done by researchers, it as now expanded to being used by practitioners who regularly record data for waste inventories or to determine economic costs of manufacturing. The process of data analysis in supply chains is becoming one of establishing data collation policies and using appropriate data conversions for economic, social, and environmental interpretations.
In a manufacturing context, primary data (directly measured) and associated secondary data (derived from conversion factors) for the carbon footprint of a product are derived from direct measurements of ingredient volumes, metered electricity consumption, metered steam consumption, and metered effluent treatment volumes used during the production. For the raw material data process input and output volumes, processing energy requirements, logistics, and distribution processes, the internally collected company information can be collated to provide an important part of the environmental or CSR review within a company. Energy, steam and water use data are usually collected using metered records to specific manufacturing processes, such as aeration, steaming, chilling, and freezing in the manufacturing and packaging stages. The volumes of all inputs, outputs, and waste associated with the finished products are used to obtain the carbon footprint. Process maps guide the procedure and are placed into the context of the data collected for carbon footprint procedures.
4.6 What Can We Do with Sustainability Assessments of Food Products? Using Carbon Footprint Data in Supply Chain Management
The data sets we can now use to determine the sustainability criteria of food products has increased because LCAs for product groups are now reported widely. The use of LCA in directing dietary and health policy is also described, and this has resulted in the consideration of the carbon footprint of different diets. Databases of LCAs now exist for the production of agricultural products, and the data concerned with manufactured food products remain relatively limited but they are growing.37 The value of considering LCA in the food processing and manufacturing arena is still developing, and it does offer many opportunities to businesses that aim to utilise resources more efficiently and need to report sustainability criteria of their products.21
Indeed, the reporting of sustainability criteria associated with agricultural products is likely to be more readily available because they are not strongly associated with branded products. The carbon footprint arena has become more competitive, as owners of food brands observe competitive advantage in reporting sustainability criteria associated with products. The stage for footprinting and LCA has changed from understanding the supply of food ingredients and staple agricultural goods to one of measuring to performance of brand value. The impetus for carbon footprinting or carrying out LCA for specific branded products will emerge from individual companies and organisations, but they can still utilise published LCA and GHG conversion factors for standardised ingredients. There are established LCAs reported for branded food products, such as the mycoprotein case study described here, and other business supply chains, such as that for white sugar.
The carbon footprinting of food products has also raised the issues associated with water use in the food supply chain. This is most important in manufacturing and processing sectors because the generation of steam and utilisation of heated water to clean, sterilise, and form foods is critical. The uses of water in the food supply chain are often realised by undertaking a footprinting or LCA programme within a company. The scope to develop LCA methodologies to encompass water use with GHG emission criteria will provide opportunities for food businesses to identify and report resource use efficiency in the future.38,39 While water use will provide many challenges to the food industry, the stimulus to develop and conserve water use in a similar way to energy use in the manufacturing sector is gaining momentum.
The use of carbon footprinting is particularly useful in considering the value of protein in food supply chains. Crops provide an important protein component of meals and animal feeds; the principle crops used as protein sources are shown in Table 4.2. These data were obtained from published LCA data and the FAO statistical database, and it can be seen that crops have lower global warming potentials (GWPs) associated with their production compared with livestock products shown in Table 4.3. The GWP of a product is equivalent to the carbon footprint, and it represents the GHG emissions associated with the production of a specific mass of a product.
Table 4.2. The GWP, land use, and production attributes of crops
Table 4.3. The GWP, land use, and production attributes of livestock
4.7 The Interactions between Affordability, Accessibility, and Food Security
We now understand how the environmental impact of protein consumption can be changed, and we need to also comprehend what are the structural and market factors that affect individuals and households in terms of access to, and affordability of, a healthy balanced diet, and what policies and interventions are effective in managing these. Dietary choice is a key attribute to understand and measure here because it will determine the outcomes of consumption and waste.31 Obtaining a suitable way of measuring food choice is a difficult task to achieve because ideally the method needs to be utilised internationally across all food supply chains. The structure of supply chains change dramatically globally, and the arena in which consumers purchase and choose foods will be variable. An understanding of this variability is important, and standardising this for analysis must be made possible; the density of purchases will be critical to any analysis. The analysis of purchasing is made possible by developing maps of the retail landscape to develop the format in which they are presented so that they are fit for purpose in production, manufacturing or retailing. The data regarding volume and density of goods sold by the retail outlets and the food categories sold as fresh produce, frozen foods, processed foods, ingredients and ready meals will be an important data source. However, how consumers use food products in the domestic environment is just as critical to reporting sustainability criteria. In terms of affordability and accessibility, these are made possible by the distribution and retailing functions within the supply chain, and they are of most interest here. The efficiency of food distribution and preservation are crucial to delivering safe food to consumers, and this can be demonstrated using case studies from efficient food supply chains. Preservation of foods and the development of cool chains for refrigerated and frozen goods are currently essential to achieve accessibility and affordability. The maintenance of cool chain activity is energy intensive, and it has significant sustainability impact because it is an important source of GHG emissions, and it also reduces the waste of food products by preservation of efficient distribution, retailing, and domestic use of products are achieved.13
Food waste trends have identified that most waste is produced by domestic use of food in developed supply chains and prior to processing or manufacturing in undeveloped supply chains. The resources utilised in delivering cool chain FMCGs is a significant target for future actions in developed supply chains because they are critical to reducing food waste by the consumer. Using the Carbon Trust refrigeration road map data, an energy balance of the frozen food supply chain has identified transport and retail sectors account for 64% of GHG emissions associated with the cool chain prior to domestic use of fresh or frozen foods.13 Fit-for-purpose food preservation facilitates the reduction of food waste produced by consumers in preparing food, and even though the cool chain is responsible for up to a third of the energy used supplying food products, preservation methods such as chilling and freezing do conserve food waste.31 Food waste minimisation across food supply chains is identified by many policymakers as an area where many opportunities for reducing environmental impacts exist.
The implementation of waste minimisation using ‘no or low’ technology interventions are proven across industry, and formalised waste management planning has become a standard protocol in many food companies. Provision of efficient mechanisms for waste management technologies should be appropriate for how consumers use products. The impetus for embedding waste management in food processing and manufacturing environments has been encouraged by the economic benefits of reducing waste. The food processing and manufacturing industry has specific challenges because large volumes of waste are organic and biodegradable. The establishment of anaerobic digestion, pyrolysis, and incineration technologies associated with solid food waste supply are now commercially proven. There is also a business requirement to divert ‘waste’ streams to valuable co-products, and these types of actions generate new ideas, increased wealth and continued regulatory compliance.
Co-product markets are now proven with many of the supporting technologies coming from the ingredients industry. They include starch by-products, biofuels, fibres, novel oils, waxes, cellulosics, and a range of fine chemicals from biorefinery systems. Significant studies identify that at least 20% of food purchases are not consumed and they are disposed of, and that reducing consumer food waste will have important implications for the processing, manufacturing, and retail sectors with regard to product pricing and design. The food industry will need to accommodate significant challenges regarding waste reduction, because the pricing, marketing, and design and portion control of products will be influenced by it, and that necessitates a whole food system approach. An opportunity for reducing consumer food waste is to consider the role of preservation techniques in the supply chain with longer-term preservation methods, such as freezing, high pressure treatment, and irradiation. Longer-term methods of preservation will need to ensure nutritional, taste, and organoleptic properties of foods are not compromised, and this is a focus of future innovative food research.
We have already considered the requirement of the food supply chain for water, but this will have important impacts of accessibility to food because water scarcity is greatest where the requirement for water availability (or water stress) is most intense globally. For example, temperate climates are likely to experience a more Mediterranean or semi-tropical climate in the future representing a challenge for food manufacturers. Researchers are developing methods that measure water used by food products, and it is relevant to describe the principle of a water footprint because it develops LCA to take a spatial approach because of the variability in the distribution of water resource stressors. There is a requirement to understand how water resources are used in food systems and what methodologies are fit-for-purpose to measure the water footprint of processes associated with foods. The water footprint measurement is achieved by identifying rechargeable and non-rechargeable water resources that are associated with food products. The method of calculating the water footprint as solely embodied water regardless of where it comes from is flawed, because it only refers to the total volume of the water used in the product life cycle and does not take into account the type of water used, for example, ‘green’ (rain water) or ‘blue’ (water from rivers and reservoirs). Furthermore, embodied water footprints do not consider if the water comes from water-stressed or water-sufficient areas, where the impact of water use in an area where there is an abundance of water is very different to a water-stressed area.
Ridoutt and Pfister have provided a revised method of calculating the water footprint of a product by taking into account the Water Stress Indicator of the area where the water is used.38 This correction gives a much improved result for the environmental impact of making that product and represents a system wide approach that depends on geospatial data. A future challenge for the water footprint methodologies is the use of spatial information that quantifies and identifies where different types of water resource exist. The implications for the management of water resources are complex and difficult to resolve because private companies, public organisations, government organisations, and consumers have different commercial and social investments associated with it. Spatial information for water resources is likely to become more valued and strategic, it also relates to developing consumption maps of the food supply chain. Research has already demonstrated that the geo-spatial information associated with food brands, food manufacturing processes, and production of waste can radically change the way food manufacturers use water. That is, the manufacture of products that use water intensively is located in areas of low water stress to alleviate regulatory pressures on manufacturing and provide improved sustainability criteria associated with products.
The methodologies used to deliver sustainable food manufacturing and processing can focus on specific aspects of product design, such as the established accreditations for carbon and water. However, there are emerging requirements to map the impacts of products across supply chains and populations of consumers. This approach enables a more detailed investigation of consumption to be completed for the life cycle of a product because maps can combine several sustainability criteria to produce indices of consumption impact and dietary choice. The development of robust evidence databases for resource efficiency has enabled a greater understanding of products and their consumption. This is particularly important when accounting for the environmental impacts of diet, which represents a specific challenge to the food processing industry because the footprinting of individual products may not correlate to the footprint of whole diets. Understanding how individual products are used and consumed will provide significant opportunities for the processing and manufacturing parts of food supply chains.
We have seen that the management of world food supply is clearly not a yield issue alone because nutritional value, consumer trends, and the infrastructure of the supply chain in the food system are of key importance. The future food system must investigate the influence of managing intrinsic supply dynamics of food and beverage ingredients and products in order to manage consumption for the desired outcome of increased global health and well-being. The global food system has been challenged with the sustainability challenges of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing food waste, and improving health and well-being attributes of products, and we have shown that manufacturers can provide solutions to protein supply and waste reduction. The food processing and manufacturing sector is critical in delivering solutions to these challenges that are increasingly enforced by policies and regulations that aim to meet national greenhouse emission targets. Understanding how the food supply chain operates between the agricultural and processing segments is critical to providing secure supplies of foods because significant preservation opportunities exist here that will deliver healthier foods and reduce food waste in the supply chain. In order to develop a sustainable food system, it is necessary to use whole supply chain approaches to measure the impact of producing and consuming food products. An important aspect of understanding how supply chains perform is communication of data regarding inputs and outputs throughout the supply chain. These input–output variables can be directly measurable as costs and volumes of resource, or indirectly measured, as in the case of trust and leadership, which have not considered here yet. The measurement of supply chain efficiency will depend on the acquisition of numerical data regarding resource use, but there is also a need to consider how organisations will use these data to provide leadership.
The global scientific community has excelled at creating an inventory of global renewable and non-renewable resources that was borne out of a necessity to account for primarily fossil fuel and food production reserves. There is a requirement to reduce risk in utilising these inventories by businesses and the development of methods, such as footprinting and LCA, that try to understand demand and consumption in economic, social, and environmental terms has transformed the potential application of inventory-based models for application in policy, sustainability, and business. The data collection and processing capability required to develop robust models of product consumption are set to transform how businesses operate. The opportunity to develop business for both profitable and sustainable outcomes is now attainable in a world where it is currently well characterised that transformations in lifestyle are largely delivered by businesses and corporations, not consumers. Ultimately, the decisions inciting these transformations will depend on leadership credentials of CEOs and the chief officers of companies, that is, through appropriate leadership that is often distributed through an organisation. Since the 1960s, environmental movements have regarded many of the issues we now group into the sustainability agenda as a goal of businesses; in doing so, NGOs have highlighted these issues and augmented public debate. However, a more recent and likely to be far more powerful means of augmenting action has been a more open society that has improved access to information on production and consumption of products associated with specific lifestyles. Indeed, we can begin to question whether the consumer will have a more dominant role in determining food sustainability in the 2050 world. These issues are the concern of the retailer and the consumer part of the supply chain where retailers aim to present ideal choice to consumers, and they respond to trends in health, sustainability, quality, and value.
4.8 Retail, Distribution, and Wholesale
The development of efficient food supply chains for populations who want products that meet value and quality attributes required is fraught with difficulties and presents us with a taut balance of safety, environmental impact, quality, and choice that results in a need to know where the risk of supply failing the consumer must be calculated. This statement might seem of some relevance considering recent adulteration of beef products with horse meat DNA in the United Kingdom in early 2013, which exposed weaknesses in stating 100% assurance in light of increasingly complex supply chains and improved analytical standards. Traceability associated with food safety has been transformed over the last 20 years, and we do have an accurate view of what the distribution network of food products globally looks like.43 There are areas of uncertainty associated with current assessments of global food distribution that need to be improved, but they do provide analysis of critical points in distribution, where compromising food safety and assurance will result in greatest risk.
The risk of adulteration and contamination in food products in efficient supply has been apparent since the rise of urbanisation and concentrated manufacturing. For example, legislation that protects the consumer of foods was forced by crises throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century in the United Kingdom. The resulting crises themselves were acute and shocking, such as contamination of sweets with arsenic in 1858, killing 20 people; more recent is the contamination of dairy products in China with dangerous melamine, which increased perceived protein content of foodstuffs. The age of health and safety reform through science and a populous link to improve the plight of the commons was a goal of much of the mid-19th century with the resulting establishment of public health policies. Outside of the acute contamination of food crises, the advances in public health were often driven by crises associated with water quality. Notably, Dr John Snow found the link between water quality and cholera in 1850s London, UK using maps and established initial epidemiological studies in crisis management.44 These provided a foundation for our current studies of traceability in supply chains, which are in principle similar to epidemiological scenarios where the result is consumption of foods that have varying consumer responses in terms of perceptions of quality and taste.
A common link in all of these food crises of adulteration or contamination are the drivers of price and availability, whether that is the producers and manufacturers wishing to drive down prices of ingredients or consumers unwilling to pay increased prices for food products. Where and at what, intensity the price pressure is exerted will often determine the level of adulteration risk where there is high demand for products. Of course, opportunity of obtaining access to the supply of cheaper ingredients will change the marketplace, and the opportunity to adulterate is dependant on the establishment of trust within the supply chain. This presents a very clear picture of where we are now because traceability processes are visible to all of us in the food supply chain. Issues of trust, justice, and responsibility are far more visible now than they ever were even if we do not necessarily recognise them on individual products as consumers. These processes of assurance and traceability have transformed the food industry, but risks still occur, as is evident with horse DNA contamination. Of course, the opportunity to criminalise the supply chain will always be a threat, but trust and brokering trust along a supply chain was once thought impossible in global supply. We have proved it is not if we just consider the mechanisms by which we can trace food from farm to fork.
The use of labelling schemes, such as those already described, have now developed to include sustainability goals, such as the GHG emissions associated with the consumption of products. The issues of fairness and trust have been aired in food supply chains with respect to animal welfare attributes, which have proved decisive in the sales of products such as free-range eggs and those products that include them as ingredients. Egg protein is a good example of an ingredient that exposes the impact of uncertainty and risk in food supply chains, as it is used in a huge number of foods and animal welfare issues have transformed production and sourcing policies globally. Thus, traceability is evident, but crises still exist because of uncertainty and variation in trust. The consumer does not necessarily feel protected by the law in such an uncertain environment, since many Europeans state that the food that they eat is unsafe. This is a ludicrous situation given the development of our food supply chains. A solution is twofold in that greater understanding of food supply by consumers and greater surveillance of risk in supply chains is required. Each retailer uses different criteria and ultimately depends on responsible reporting of qualitative data focussed around consumer choices.
Understanding the critical role of distribution networks in developing sustainable food and beverage supply chains has resulted in many case studies of what sustainable food distribution can do. There is a dearth of information for emerging economies where the establishment refrigeration and cool chains are still developing and in many respects is catching up with the successes of efficient production provided by transitions such as the Green Revolution. This is currently most obviously manifested as food waste arising before food manufacture or processing stages of the food supply chain, and this offers many challenges for the future sustainability of the food system.
A large study reporting how LCA and Geographic Information System (GIS) methods can be used to assess the sustainability of food transport for a region has been established by the author in the United Kingdom, and this is used as a case study for sustainable food distribution here. While LCA and GIS can provide scenarios and demonstrations of food transportation, a critical part of any distribution function is identifying and delivering innovations that make food distribution more efficient in terms of price, product quality, and customer experience. The case study described here is for the Yorkshire and Humber Region in the United Kingdom, and it delivered sustainable distribution options for a group of 60 small to medium companies (small and medium enterprises, SMEs). The total sample for the Flow Project included eight detailed case studies and the results for 52 companies presented here.
Understanding distribution patterns for food and drink supply chains is an essential prerequisite for implementing logistical frameworks that aim to provide sustainable distribution systems that enable efficient business development. Sustainable food and beverage distribution can implement many innovations because of the relationship to timeliness, packaging, fuel consumption, and assurance among many other attributes. For example, these may include designing out waste to conserve fuel and space; development of novel preservation and packaging to extend shelf-life; utilisation of biofuels globally and transport efficiency tools; and implementing customer relationship management (CRM) frameworks that stimulate cooperation between suppliers in a distribution network. Table 4.4 shows the initial research in this case study, which determined the current state of food distribution operations for 52 SMEs and shows how innovations might be implemented to improve food logistics. This type of initial survey provides a snapshot of supply chains, and it can identify where implementation of relevant and appropriate technical innovations across whole supply chains can be deployed.
Table 4.4. Analysis of current-state food and beverage distribution situation for SMEs and micro-companies with what could be achieved
Source: The data were obtained from the research of W. Martindale and developed during the Flow Project (2010), which involved 60 food and beverage companies in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of the United Kingdom.
| What distribution situations currently exist | What could improve this situation, making food distribution more sustainable | Potential innovation intervention area |
|---|---|---|
| Own distribution resources used | Group distribution. Cooperate with trade members and use specialist haulage. | Route planning CRM with suppliers |
| Distribution cost is 10% of turnover | Implement new cost-saving technologies. Increase fuel and transport costs create need to implement cost saving technologies and networks | Biofuel utilisation Accounting for carbon dioxide emissions CRM with transport suppliers |
| Distribute nationally | Develop Internet and international retail. Impetus for internet marketing and international growth. | ICT applications and web solutions—selling and online book/reservation |
| Distribute less than 1 tonne of product daily | Cooperation between suppliers to rationalise high amounts of small load distribution. | Food groups and cooperative initiatives |
| Distribute ambient and chilled | Utilise freezing and other forms of preservation. | New materials and methods of preservation |
| Distribute using pallets | Utilise retail-ready, reusable, and recyclable packaging. | Designing out waste Life cycle analysis approaches |
| Own spare storage capacity | Cooperation between suppliers to optimise storage | Production and distribution planning/scenario generation Design out waste |
The limits of regional agricultural product supply have been traditionally removed by efficient food logistical infrastructure, preservation, and packaging. Globalisation of the global food system has entailed the development of novel methods that assess the efficiency and security of supply chain function. The requirement to understand efficiency has been coupled with the requirement of policymakers to define sustainability and health criteria associated with food supply chains. We are now beginning to account for these limits using LCA and footprinting methods, which have provided a need for food companies to identify fit-for-purpose data sources and data analysis methodologies that deliver sustainable assessment of transport. What has not been tested rigorously is the value of these methods of assessment to food security.
It is clear that efficient food distribution is an important part of the food supply chain because it will provide safe food where it is required. The requirement of fit-for-purpose packaging and preservation of foods is necessary and a consideration for any product development. An understanding of how food businesses and transport business are clustered geographically is important when considering the structure of food supply. The resulting foodscapes can be used to plan sustainable distribution infrastructure that provides safe storage and transport of foods so that access to affordable foods is possible. In order to demonstrate these principles, we will use the case study of regional food distribution that was developed in 2007 with the Regional Food Group in Yorkshire and Humber, UK. The project was called ‘Flow’, and it tackled the issues of food distribution in the regional food industry; the reasons were on the surface obvious: in 2007, the volatility of fuel price was all too apparent, and there was ominous policy pressure based on environmental (largely GHG emission focussed) credentials to increase road excise duty or introduce congestion charging in urban areas. These pressures have not disappeared and remain issues Flow has responded to, in the context of running a food business in Yorkshire and Humber, UK. It was clear that the transport of variable order volumes, energy, and fuel consumption pressures on the smaller food companies manufacturing perishable goods could be improved where there was duplication of delivery destinations, and this provided opportunities to strategically rationalise food logistics.
The Flow study of the food and beverage industry in Yorkshire and Humber collected data from 52 of the 220 Regional Food Group (RFG, a trade organisation) companies to provide an initial snapshot of how food and beverage products were transported, what volumes were transported, and what were the major issues facing transport of goods in RFG companies. The project findings are summarised in Table 4.4, and routes to improvement are highlighted. The food businesses of the region were also mapped using a Geographic Information System (GIS) to show where the location of different food sectors in the Yorkshire and Humber Region are. Generally, manufactured products will be associated with major transport routes and population (Figure 4.2). However, sectors such as dairy and meat that depend on rural production are more diffuse and distribute according to production centres (Figure 4.3).
Source: Data from Ordnance Survey © Crown copyright (2008).
Source: Data from Ordnance Survey © Crown copyright (2008).
The Flow study approach identified that the distribution of vegetable and fruit producers is associated with the production and growing regions for primary produce and processing sites, such as trimming and washing plants. This is associated with the best growing regions and more productive soils suited for horticultural production. Manufacturers require good transport links for principally bulk transport of fruit and vegetables that are perishable and need to be delivered to customers or preservers in a timely way. The distribution of confectionery manufacturers is associated with the historical importance of confectionery products. The confectionery sector will distribute at ambient temperatures and not require chilled or frozen storage capacity. Beverage manufacturers are clustered towards the population centres. The distribution of dairies and ice cream manufacturers is diffuse, but there is a clear clustering towards areas of population because of the need for major transport routes for transporting fresh milk is of importance, and proximity to motorways is a trend in dairy distribution. Fat and oil manufacturers are associated with importing product through ports, as with the distribution of seafood manufacturers associated with landings of product.
The delivery destinations of the 52 Flow companies showed a clear clustering of delivery points within the Yorkshire and Humber region demonstrating that food distribution for small- and medium-sized companies remains relatively local, with most deliveries not being more than 50 km from point of dispatch and production. The study also enabled an assessment of the direct costs of operating trucks and vans to distribute products. A lorry with capacity for 26 pallets will result in a pallet space cost of £3 076 per year, increasing to £11 372 per year for a pallet space using a smaller 1 tonne payload van. A 7.5-tonne lorry will entail a £6 598 cost of a pallet space per year. The costs do not include fuel or tyres, and other variable fuel costs will clearly increase pallet space costs by between £1 400 (articulated lorry with 26 pallet spaces) and £3000 (van with one pallet space) a year. Developing studies that relate sustainability criteria to costs are essentially to delivering efficient supply chains because the sustainability criteria of a business and the business or financial systems in companies do not work together or integrate usually.
Data capture for food distribution systems is critical in enabling this type of approach, and it is supported by the emergence of open-source geo-information databases that can be utilised to obtain supply chain data. This is an important future development in the risk mapping arena for logistics. Table 4.5 uses this type of application, and the data sets used to convert the primary distribution data (volume of product transported and distance transported) are publically accessible. The data from the Flow study presented in Table 4.5 are an assessment of the destinations of food product deliveries within 70 km of Leeds City Centre, UK in a typical week for 10 meat product-manufacturing smaller companies in the Yorkshire and Humber region within 70 km of Leeds. The impact of distribution for these companies within the distance assessed as concentric circles from the centre is reported in the table.
Table 4.5. The delivery points for 10 meat product manufacturing companies located within 70 km of Leeds and their associated impacts within 70 km radius of Leeds in a typical week for 10 meat product-manufacturing companies in the Yorkshire and Humber Region
4.9 Developing Diets for Improved Sustainability and Health Criteria
We have now seen the need to obtain optimal micronutrient and protein nutrition so that good health is delivered from a balanced diet, and it is crucial to understand how these principles can help to deliver a sustainable diet. While the focus of food security has been largely on underconsumption of energy and protein, the converse food security issue is overconsumption of foods that has an increased impact on both food security and food supply. Increased overconsumption of foods will result in diseases associated with poor nutrition and increased food waste. In this context, it is crucial to understand why people overconsume food and how this interacts with the use of food in the home that results in increased waste. In order to demonstrate how analysis of food supply chains can provide insights into how consumers utilise food products, we use a case study here that defines the problems of overconsumption of food in the United Kingdom with respect to the retail landscape and foodscape of an area.
The United Kingdom has one of the highest levels of obesity in Europe, and research into the causes of obesity has suggested the development of obesogenic environments is responsible. Research carried out by the author of this book and Peter Kucher in Sheffield, UK has explored whether physical aspects of the environment and the retail landscape associated with food accessibility are responsible or not. The aim of our study has been to examine and compare areas of low and high children's obesity and the elements of physical environment in the county of South Yorkshire in the United Kingdom that might result in an increased prevalence of obesity. The results of the analysis suggest that there is no variation between areas of low and high percentage of obese children's body mass index (BMI) when we consider the number of food outlets and other geographic elements of the built and physical environment. Proximity to food retail outlets, restaurants, and, green and open spaces do not show any significant variation with respect to areas of high and low obesity. This contradicts the research into obesogenic environment, which suggests that built and physical environment have an effect on obesity.46 The data for the study in South Yorkshire were obtained from the National Obesity Observatory (NOO) and the UK Office of National Statistics, where the proportion of obese children for specific areas can be identified.47 The data sets provided by the National Obesity Observatory and Public Health England are very useful in giving the opportunity to develop powerful demonstrations of geographic analysis. Our initial studies have used geographical interpolation methods that combine the physical and built elements to solve specific policy challenges, such as improving public health, and by understanding these attributes associated with the physical environment, we can identify how they have an impact on specific health problems, such as obesity. Similar approaches can be used for other public health issues associated with food consumption, and these geospatial approaches may help us to define what is a sustainable diet by interpolating several health and sustainability criteria spatially.
We know that understanding nutritional requirements for health is essential if we are to communicate what sustainable diets are, and scientific studies have established what nutritional requirements are and what healthy meals should be. There are standard texts that provide data on the composition of foods and meals; the challenge facing us currently is to extend these data to dietary advice and recipes that the food industry can use for health and sustainability criteria.48 Protein dominates sustainable consumption issues for diets, and the intake of essential amino acids is critical to obtaining sufficient protein in human nutrition, with World Health Organisation (WHO) guidelines stating that at least 0.66 g of protein per kilogram of body weight is required per day for maintenance of metabolism. Most importantly, lysine and the sulfur-containing amino acids (methionine and cysteine) will determine the nutritional quality of the protein source, and these attributes of protein nutrition defined by WHO can be placed into the context of recipes and diet. In terms of meals and diet, different food categories have variable protein value with respect to protein and ability to be used in recipes that deliver sufficient protein nutrition.
Fruits generally fall below WHO protein requirements but provide much of the micronutirients previously discussed, and root vegetables are mixed in meeting WHO protein requirements. Leafy/green vegetables (asparagus, broccoli, kale, spinach etc.) can provide important protein sources, but grains are a crucial source of dietary protein outside of livestock sources. Grains are poorer lysine sources, with the exception of oats. Nuts and seeds vary in protein content, with species like pumpkin providing protein-rich seeds. Legumes are a very good source of protein and dominated by the consumption of soy products, and as a protein food group, they are comparable to meat, eggs, and milk.
Table 4.6 shows the protein content and essential amino acid content for livestock products and define why they are good protein sources with respect to the already described food categories and vegetable products. These type of data are the kind that need to be formulated into planned diets according to the scientifically determined composition of diet that is communicated by WHO and other organisations. Protein is not the only point of challenge for the future, although the role of protein and micronutrients in regulating satiety holds much promise for managing overconsumption and obesity. A further challenge is to manage carbohydrate loading in diets because of diseases that result in poor regulation of carbohydrates, specifically the diabetes group of diseases, are at similar epidemic levels to obesity. Indeed, the relationship between them are the causal drivers of overconsumption, and improved dietary communication to consumers by the food industry is largely untested in the way that environmental impacts are with respect to the use of footprinting and LCA methodologies.
Table 4.6. Protein content of livestock- and vegetable-derived foods: protein and amino acid contents of common foods (grams per 1000 cal)
Table 4.7 shows the fibre, energy content, and glycaemic index for a number of carbohydrate rich foods. Understanding glycaemic index is crucial here because it enables the planning of diet with regard to slow and fast release of sugars, essentially how quickly complex sugars such as starch are digested, and the sugar derived is absorbed into the circulatory system. Thus, with protein, we have the metabolic requirement for growth and health as a determinant of sustainable meals, and for carbohydrates, we have the glyceamic index. If a diet is composed of sugars that are only absorbed quickly, that is, they have a high glycaemic index, then diabetes risk is increased. The use of fructose syrups in beverages is controversial in this context because overconsumption of beverages with high glycaemic indices has been associated with increased trends in obesity and diabetes diseases.49
Table 4.7. Fibre, calories, and GI per 1000 cal for a range of foods
Relating supply chain functions to diets and meals has proved to be a difficult process to achieve, and it has often been overlooked and left to the presentation of culinary methods by the public relations and media industry associated with chefs and restaurants. This is likely to change in future, as the need to conserve livestock products, reduce waste and prepare more healthy meals become important to sustainability and health policies. The CSIRO Total Wellbeing Diet (TWD), which has been referred to previously, is an example of this approach, and it has come from the Australian Government's science agency, CSIRO.50 The diet has been developed at CSIRO's Clinical Research Unit in Adelaide, South Australia, and has led to the development of the higher protein, low-fat diet that is nutritious, facilitates sustainable weight loss, and is supported by scientific evidence. The TWD CSIRO book has extended scope to recipes and diet plans that aim to stop overconsumption of foods, which in turn has a very clear sustainability and food security impact in that diet planning will reduce overconsumption, reduce waste, and improve health. This type of approach may enable consumers to assess options in dietary change based on science in future.
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