Visionaries in the corporate world who strive for their businesses to meet sustainability goals tend to associate them with risk reduction, while those who do not implement sustainable management tend to be deterred by risk. What should be always considered is that projections are nearly always wrong, in that they are projections, and this goes for population projections and business projections. The longer the time period the projections run for, the more likely they are to deviate; these basic rules are important to consider because projections may only be viewed as guides to future trends. Risks in business are all too often associated with failure, and herein are the problems with meeting sustainable goals. These are illustrated by Yvon Chouinard, CEO of the Patagonia Company, who determined human values of enjoyment and focused on components of a whole system to achieve sustainable outcomes.1 These are achieved by balancing the production capacity to consumer requirements and the consumption impacts with the available options of recycling, reusing, and repairing products.2 Measurements of success are classified in a dualistic way using quantitative and qualitative analysis that is now described, and the goal is to use both forms of analysis to reduce risks of implementing sustainability in businesses.
Technical systems, such as LCA, that quantify sustainability attributes, such as embodied greenhouse gas emissions, enable labelling and evidence-based statements to be made regarding products. The technical measurement systems can also redirect strategy because LCA approaches can identify processes that result in lower embodied energy during a product lifecycle. In the case of Patagonia, LCA was utilised to show that polyester fibres were less impacting than cotton fibres with regard to embodied energy, greenhouse gas emissions, and water use. This measurement guided Patagonia in making design and resource decisions for the future. However, LCA and labelling activities of a business can only go so far in providing a measure of sustainability. They cannot form the only basis for an overall scorecard of sustainability.
Qualitative values within organisations are critical to attaining sustainable goals and measuring these presents numerous problems. The approach of visionary CEOs to date has been to develop integrated or step-by-step approaches to achieving an overall goal. The steps are based on the human values of enjoyment, fun, and respect. Results are impressive; such approaches work and trust is a core value across the supply chain and organisations involved with it. These caveats are explained in greater detail in Yvon Chouinard's book, Let My People Go Surfing, which notable ecological researchers have lauded as a handbook for responsible corporations. Approaches to sustainable business need to be bold, and they are exceptionally risky because they will move away from standard practices. What is critical is the perceived value of trust within an organisation. Valuing and quantifying trust may not be an impossible or complex task. Evolutionary biologists have quantified altruistic and selfish behaviours; indeed, these methodologies have transformed modern biology. Scientists can even quantify altruistic and selfish traits to specific genetic attributes. Behavioural models of altruistic nature have been applied in the financial sectors, but we have yet to test them within the sustainability arena. I believe that business leaders have developed methods of achieving sustainability through trust, and scientists now have an opportunity to formalise these trust values using evolutionary behavioural models.
An awareness of data capture and utilisation is critical; it will continue to change the way we work, and it will be the lifeblood of the new models of supply. The volumes of data required to predict and understand consumption are becoming attainable as a consequence of open sources, wireless communications, and online digital arenas. These represent an important development in humankind's ability to utilise data in the last decade. The data concerning consumption of products in populations provide important insights into how impacts are manifested in society. Corporates and consumers in the future will demand a requirement to measure the impact of consumption in populations with regard to their social, economic, and environmental values and attributes. It is impossible to appraise the sustainability attributes without making and assessment of supply chains for producing and consuming products.
Traditionally, supply chain data have been processed for labelling schemes that prescribe particular qualities on environment or fairness to a specific product. For producers, this has been delivered as the stewardship and assurance schemes; for manufacturers, it has been focused on health and safety, and retailers have provided a melting pot where each of these labels have been presented to the consumer to see what is perceived as most important by them. There have been notable successes, but it is a chaotic system of assessment that is not suitable to the future supply chain function where data are collected in real time all the time. The failures of the labelling system for sustainability are illustrated strongly by corporations led by visionary goals of creating a sustainability index for their organisation and products. When this has been attempted, it has failed but is it possible to do?
The increased ability to capture production and consumption data can be integrated with supply chain analysis methods to provide opportunity for the future corporate to exert decisions associated with measureable trust and fairness. The producers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers segments of supply chains have traditionally had defined start and stop roles or points, but open-source information has made this type of segmented approach increasingly integrated with a more comprehensive data system. Models detailing the linear relationships of supply chains are not sufficient anymore, and there are opportunities to apply more dynamic theories of supply and consumption that transform our view of what is achievable and sustainable. Control theory offers one such methodology that is likely to be more applicable to our future world view because it accounts for supply chains working together and sums the impacts of components within a supply system. Control theory presents supply chains as branches in throughput pathways, and the flow of materials through them are proportional control coefficients. Control coefficients that are removed from equilibrium points are control points of the system. The sum of control of these pathways is always unity, and the control points are critical to the working of these pathways. Thus, control theory provides the means to analyse the operations effectively, such as supply and consumption, providing a means to measure them at specific points or definite parts of a system where they might vary in control; these are the critical control points. Measures of sustainability in systems and supply chains will focus on control points of supply and consumption; models based on control theory can be applied to determine where an intervention to a supply chain is likely to be most effective at improving the sustainability criteria.
A traditional view of where supply chains should be deployed is based on standard compound interest (return on investment) and maximum sustainable yield models. These approaches need to be made more robust and control theory provides a significant basis to determine how supply chains work; models of colonisation can also provide insights into where opportunities that are sustainable actually are. The models concerned with island biogeography can be applied and can integrate existing views of ecosystem service values. Current theories regarding connectivity can provide assessment of how robust supply and consumption dynamics are likely to be realised.
The threat of limited food security has been highlighted globally by the perfect storm scenario of recent years, where the attributes of environmental degradation, economic growth, population increase, and climate change have uniquely impacted on the world food system. This has focused intense policy activity on sustainable production, processing, and manufacturing of food products. The major issue we have not fully considered for food sustainability is managing responsible food consumption because it has a most important role to play in determining the environmental impacts of resource use as identified by key policy and research reports. Indeed, reporting of limitations within the food system has highlighted crisis situations for governments and the populations of nations. If we are to manage food consumption sustainably, it is necessary to investigate the resource flows across food supply chains where the processing and manufacturing functions have a critical role in delivering sustainable products. The role of processors and manufacturers will be critical because profitable business practices can be maintained by sustainably reducing resource use.
Food processors and manufacturers have a critical role in the supply chain with regard to designing products that are integrated into sustainable diets. Currently, measured sustainability criteria, such as the carbon footprint, are focused on the embodied energy and GHG emissions associated with individual products. However, populations eat whole meals, not individual products, and the sustainability criteria of diets are largely unknown and untested. I consider that the delivery of sustainable diets presents future opportunities to processors and manufacturers. This is because product development innovations can focus on the delivery of whole meals, and the associated GHG, water, and waste impacts are associated with diets where they have previously been reported for individual food products, not meals. Indeed, this presents a novel approach that many processors and manufacturers have not fully considered yet even though the food industry has developed meal guides, recipes, and recipe literature associated with specific products delivering nutritional goals for consumers. However, sustainable goals or impacts of food for consumers are not generally promoted in dietary guides and literature. This results in sustainability being perceived as an interesting but immeasurable consumption goal for many organisations and individuals. It does not have to be like this because the industry has the tools and skills that have been applied to improving nutritional communications that can provide a model for the promotion of sustainability.
Our analysis has provided the position that if consumers could measure and respond to the sustainability value of whole meals and their diet, then they would potentially change how they purchase and consume products for sustainable outcomes. Indeed, we suggest that the future consumer will hold both nutrition and sustainability criteria of foods with equal value because the manufacturing and retail functions will deliver these values with products. This will mean that processors and manufacturers will have to design products for diets that are nutritionally robust and result in lower GHG emissions, water use, and waste production. We believe the evidence base to do this exists through those sources that are freely available, and the innovations in product development can be utilised to deliver this dual goal of nutritional and environmental sustainability for 9 billion consumers. For example, the open innovation programmes developed by major food manufacturers and publishers in recent years are indicative of this emergent open-source information resource available to food product developers and companies.
Population pressures remain dominant in food security, and the transition from the rural producer to the future urban consumer in the 2050 world means there has to be an improvement in the efficiency of resource use in food processing across whole food supply chains. It is an essential component of getting food to more people using decreased inputs, and population projections provide a specific challenge to the food processing and manufacturing sectors. An essential component of realising these greater efficiencies is the integration of farming, processing, and manufacturing with regard to producing sustainable quality and quantity of food. The reduction of GHG emissions, water use and food waste will be essential, and the integration of smarter design and logistical planning in supply chains is required to do this. Marketing the sustainability agenda to consumers will help to ameliorate threats to food security that are also institutional or behavioural in nature.3
An understanding of the whole food system and supply chains will be required by food processors and manufacturers because consumers are changing lifestyles, expectations and demand for specific foods.4,5 Nations that are undergoing rapid economic development, such as Brazil, Russia, India, and China, will experience large changes in manufactured food demand. This is most emphasised globally by the transition of populations living rurally to those living in urban environments. Urban living is associated with changes in how meals and diets are used, and it will change associated choice editing across all supply chains. FAOSTAT data show increased urbanisation for the global population. This scenario is specifically emphasised by the transition for China and India, where rapid urbanisation will result in dramatic changes in food demand not only in terms of volume of products but also in terms of the lifestyle criteria associated with those products.6`
The future food system will result in a requirement for food processors and manufacturers to consider the following three principles:
The integration of regulatory measures and policy-making has stimulated food manufacturing and processing companies all over the world to develop sustainability strategies that have specific focus on issues related to energy, water, waste management, and the environment.7 These plans are driven by social, legislative, economic, and political issues that will result in food products being made with a lower energy, carbon, and water footprints. These strategies focus on the following criteria:
Furthermore, consumer demand for sustainability criteria has increased even though most purchase decisions are clearly focused on price and quality criteria of products. An apparent opportunity for the food manufacturing and processing sector is the increased awareness of meeting energy use targets through national reporting and trading schemes that aim to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Energy consumption reporting is critical within the food processing and manufacturing sector because energy inputs are intensive for generation of steam, hot water, and heat. The emergence of markets that support greenhouse gas emission reduction has provided sector leadership and the opportunity for companies to differentiate their products based on sustainability criteria associated with supply chains. An important aspect of developing sustainable foods remains the engagement of external and internal stakeholders for the food supply chain.
Communication of science and technology is an essential component of the practicable use of sustainability data associated with food supply chains, and this is also the target for the application of future creativity and invention in dealing with consumers. This has clear implications for managing knowledge; the communication of science in the media is often achieved by non-scientists, and the media may report accurately but not scientifically. There are naturally worlds of differences between a newspaper and a scientific journal. Furthermore, there is an extremely competitive grading and assessment system for the thousands of peer-reviewed journals within the scientific community. Does this really make any difference to what we read so long as it informs opinion, develops ideas, and keeps us up to date? Scientists in the media are as established as the term scientist itself, and current exposure to scientific communication through online and social media resources is greater than ever. A review of recent news stories from blog or social media feeds will give an idea of what drives media interest, which is constantly running 24 hours a day, every day of the year. The food and health sector is a vibrant source of media frenzy, disruption, and current views on how large organisations develop and market new ideas and products is of almost constant interest. The emergence of new and ‘old’ issues, such as food security and food safety, follows on from this. Thus, media stories need not be new, but they will always catch public awareness and attention.
The quality of diet is an area where science enters the media foremost, and the relationship between diet and health is a close but overlooked one. A consideration of the cultural attitudes towards science can provide useful insights into how new ideas and technologies have developed. It is customary for science to distance itself from art and social disciplines. However, major breakthroughs in scientific study often have roots in being stimulated by cultural or market drivers. The development of management systems can help businesses provide statements of environmental and social responsibility here. They have been a significant outcome of environmental awareness. These management systems have defined aims and outcomes and can be applied to all industrial sectors. The use of LCA and environmental management system (EMS) frameworks has provided an important means for the food industry to begin to assess the impact of supply chain activity. The challenge is to make these analyses relevant to consumers by relating the science to meals and diets. These are the functional units that producers, manufacturers, and retailers must work with to ensure the delivery of sustainable products for consumers. The regulator has an important role to play because laws and enforcement can stimulate change; for example, the emergence of GHG emission trading and credits for GHG reduction has transformed energy use across the industrial arena. However, it is the incentive to improve efficiency within supply chains that provides major leaps forward because they are source of innovations and activities that will deliver what consumers want.
Developing product sustainability values alongside those of value and quality have become important to all functions of the food supply chain. This is evident in the assurance scheme and labelling revolutions that have occurred across food supply chains over the last 20 years. As an observer of this change within the agricultural and food industry, I have found that most innovations and steps towards developing sustainable products come from businesses who see opportunity in developing products that provide consumers with lifestyle choices they want, as well as the quality and price incentives. This change demands that businesses utilise both quantitative and qualitative data to guide decisions: the quantitative aspects are concerned with methodologies such as LCA, and qualitative aspects are largely concerned what consumers require, want, and how they utilise products. Using a mixed-methods approach, both quantitative and qualitative, is a necessary outcome of developing a sustainable strategy for any FMCG supply chain.
Understanding resource efficiency and the criticality of specific materials used by food supply chains will shape the form of the second Green Revolution that follows the first, which solved many of the production issues that were the cause of food insecurity in the twentieth century. We have seen the emergence of assurance and traceability schemes in the twentieth-first century and their establishment has strengthened the values associated with foods. There remain significant challenges to providing food security, and it is clear that what, and how, the consumer uses ingredients and foods is crucial to delivering sustainability and security to the global food system. The development of the current food system has established trade organisations and agreements that will respond to security and criticality issues more efficiently than ever before and provide a deeper understanding of criticality within supply chains. Developing responsibility across the food system will mean there is an increasing requirement to understand what consumers require. This will result in far more creative ways to handle consumer data, and this will require integration of qualitative and quantitative analyses. Increasingly developments that solve sustainability challenges are being made outside of government actions and incentives because there is a very clear business case to achieve security and sustainability. The unit of this change is the meal we eat three or four times a day, the recipes we prepare and the foods we order. Small changes in obtaining the appropriate protein intake, reducing food waste and getting the correct nutritional balance associated with this plate of food will provide solutions to the challenges that currently face us. It is hoped that this book goes some way to highlight how these changes are going to be made, managed, and measured by humankind's future food system.