Explanatory Analysis of Factors Influencing the Support for Sustainable Food Production and Distribution Systems: Results from a Rural Canadian Community

Disruptions in the food supply chain: A literature review

Disruptions in the food supply chain are events that affect the flow of products and can be caused by extreme weather, natural disasters, conflicts, pandemics, and political situations, among others. These events can significantly impact food products' availability, quality, and cost, creating risks to the well-being of local populations and livelihoods. The specific literature on food supply chains needs to address other approaches to risk categorisation, which allow for establishing reference frameworks focused on the general classification of types of disruption and parameters related to solution methods. In this paper, we present a literature review to analyse the disruptions in the food supply chain. We classified 74 papers according to the types of disruptions, stakeholders, response level, supply chain echelon, solution methods, goals, and related considerations. The review results showed that the most common disruptions in the food supply chain are climatic, biological and environmental, logistics and infrastructure, and supply. The results of this review allow us to suggest some new research directions.

Issues and Challenges in Short Food Supply Chains: A Systematic Literature Review

Consumers increasingly prefer more direct and more transparent food distribution channels, such as short food supply chains (SFSCs). Nonetheless, SFSCs face a variety of issues and challenges in their creation and functioning, resulting in limited performance and sustainability, as well as in difficulties of upscaling. This study aims at improving our understanding of SFSCs’ issues/challenges through a systematic review of the most recent literature. We perform a full-text content analysis of 44 studies, looking for answers to the research questions: At which parts of the SFSCs do the issues/challenges occur? How can we characterize the issues/challenges in SFSCs? While doing so, we offer a holistic perspective on SFSCs. We make use of the SCOR model to define SFSC processes as well as to describe the nature of these issues/challenges. The findings of this study shed light on the nature and strategic-tactical-operational level of the issues/challenges in SFSCs and point out the limitations in the existing literature such as the SFSC processes that are neglected. The holistic approach we suggest and the insight on SFSCs’ issues/challenges we provide can help researchers offer effective solutions and strategies to support the overall development of SFSCs.