Unwrapping food supply chains and their climate impacts
In this short video series, Dr Anne Touboulic and Dr Lucy McCarthy unwrap their knowledge of food supply chains to explore some of the factors that go into food supply chains and some of the changes that can help to create a more sustainable system for the future.
Anne is an Associate Professor in Operations Management at University of Nottingham and Lucy is Senior Lecturer in Strategy and International Business at University of Bristol. Together, they have several decades-worth of combined experience, exploring food supply chains and sustainability.
In this series they explain the where, when and how of food supply chains to show how it works and the potential impact of policy, business practices and consumer choices. You can watch the full video below, or scroll down to view each of the individual segments from the series.
You can also find out more about Anne's research via her profile page
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Part one - introduction and overview
Anne and Lucy explain their reserch expertiese and the content and aims of this short series.
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Hi, I'm Anne Touboulic and I work at the University of Nottingham. I'm Lucy McCarthy and I work at the University of Bristol. Lucy and I have been working together for over a decade researching issues on food supply chains. Particularly, we're interested in driving change for more sustainable food systems and by sustainable, we mean more equitable food systems and systems that are more in line with the natural environment.
Research estimates that agriculture is directly responsible for up to 8.5% of all greenhouse gas emissions with a further 14.5% coming from land use change. In fact, 80% of deforestation is due to land being cleared for growing food. Transforming our food supply chains is therefore critical if we're going to reach carbon reduction targets in the UK and worldwide. It also helps us to develop systems that will cope with the damage already caused.
Another key aspect of our research is around value. So how do we revalue the labour that goes into our food
supply chains and by labour, we mean the farmers who are growing or producing our food, but also the non-human labour which underpins our food system.
So today we want to talk to you about the where, the how and the when of food supply chains and then talk you a bit more about the higher-level changes that could be made. So that would include policy and the role of big corporations in changing our food supply chains to be more equitable.
Part two - where does our food come from?
In this section, Anne and Lucy examine the impact of different lengths of supply chains.
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So, we're going to talk to you about the where of supply chains. So, where does our food come from? And these can be long and international supply chains, or short and more local supply chains.
So, an example of a local supply chain is Apples, although they can come from abroad, we do produce apples in the UK. So, they're mainly grown in Kent in the southwest and some in the Midlands as well. So, this can facilitate a really short food supply chain where we get beautiful apples grown and you might have a farmer or some labourers picking and collecting those apples and then they get transported to a local green grocer’s. That's a really short example, there you can just purchase your apple and eat it.
On the other hand, very long supply chains exist for food. Most of them are quite long actually. And they will involve several stages so we can use the example of chocolate to illustrate that. Chocolate doesn’t grow in the UK. It is grown in Parts of Africa and Central and South America. It will get our harvested there and it will go through several stages before it reaches us as consumers. So, for example from being harvested it will be transported perhaps up to an exporter that will ship it again. It will arrive in the UK. It might get transported again, to go to a processor and then finally again transported to get to the consumers perhaps or a supermarket or other platforms where we would buy it.
And the length of these supply chains then has very large implications for their carbon footprint, the amount of people involved, from where those resources are taken from, and who's paid along the way.
The where is also significant in light of the changing climate in the global North we've come to rely on extended food supply chains. For instance, in the UK, we import a significant amount of food and this food comes from locations that are already being disproportionately affected by climate change in part resulting in significant decreases in food productivity. For example, Spain produces the majority of fruit and veg consumed across Europe, but it is already being disrupted by changing weather patterns and it is estimated that crop yields will decrease by a further 15 to 30% as global temperatures increase.
Growing food more locally and in a wider range of places therefore also helps to compensate for the damage that is already happening as well as reducing further impacts.
Part three - how is our food processed?
Anne and Lucy consider how different types of food are processed and transforned by the industry.
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transcript here
Part four - when should we eat particular foods?
Timing is another key factor for sustainability chains, and in this video Anne and Lucy unpack why that is and what that means for different actors that can affect supply chains.
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So, when should we eat particular foods?
Ideally, we would eat foods that are in season. So, for the example of apples we can eat them at the time, but we can also engage in processes that can extend the life of an Apple. So, this could be storing or preserving those apples to eat at a later date.
When we take the example of chocolate, well, it's never in season in the UK, but that doesn't mean we should not consume it; what that means is that we need to really value where it has come from and where it's grown and all that goes into bringing it to us as consumers.
As for when to eat it, revaluing chocolate as a treat and luxury product would help by not putting strains on already exhausted natural ecosystems. We need to reconnect with the natural cycles and break away from expecting all foods to be available at all times. This is something that individuals should consider but primarily will require radical change in how supermarkets and other organizations operate and what they offer.
In an effort to eat seasonally, we also need to be aware that climates are changing across the world and that this can create different seasons for food, but also it's about educating ourselves as to when particular foodstuffs are in season and where they come from but also retailers could take a role in this through labelling and providing more information that is accessible to consumers.
And finally, there are local policy implications and for example, let's say School meals to be in season and to be aligned with what is produced at that time of year.
Part five - summary and conclusions
So what can we do about it? Anne and Lucy share some key points to take away.
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So, to sum up some of the implications of what we've discussed today. We're going to talk to you about that at a policy level at a corporate level and at an individual level.
So, at a policy level we mean both national and local policies can facilitate the transition to more sustainable food systems. For example, by just thinking about where food is sourced and procurement processes both national and local can promote sourcing from local farmers and farmers in the UK rather than importing so much food so that we build some resilience into our food system.
And that policy can be used at the corporate level as well. So, to encourage or to drive large retailers to source more locally to take responsibility and accountability for their own actions and to encourage them to share the profits more equitably across the supply chain in order to revalue those actors that we spoke about and we encourage you to question the information that is coming from policy and from corporations around that.
And other things we can do as we've discussed is to try to eat seasonally, to try to eat locally where possible and to choose less processed options where those are available to you. We completely understand that the food supply chain is a complex system of a variety of different actors and that it is through collective action and engagement that we can create some changes to create more equitable food supply chains.
Anne Touboulic
Anne Touboulic is an associate professor in Operations Management, Nottingham University Business School.
We are keen to share the insights arising from this research with relevant policy audiences. To find out more, please email Anne.Touboulic@nottingham.ac.uk.