Exploring the potential of digital tools to foster short supply chain: a mixed-methods international study.
Authors: Michaud, M., Le Moal, F., Van Parys, E., De Steur, H., Bray, J., Rahmani, D., Lešić, V., Tarcsi, Á. and Ronge, B.
Conference: International Conference on Culinary Arts and Sciences
Dates: 17-20 June 2024
Abstract:Introduction Current industrial scale food producers and processors lead to complex supply chains that are disconnected from local communities. A rebalancing toward more local supply is sought to address the challenges of climate change, food supply resilience, food miles, food waste and supporting the next generation of producers and operators with a fair income. Thereby, use of digital tools can help to enable and promote transparent local provision from local producers, including small scale family farmers, and processors direct to consumers. Objective This study is part of the EU project FoodMAPP and aims to identify stakeholder’s (consumers, producers, retailers…) practices and to identify key drivers and barriers toward the adoption of digital solutions for improving short food supply chain and provisioning.
Method and Design The study is conducted in 2 phases (one qualitative and one quantitative), each in 7 European countries: UK, France, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Croatia and Hungary.
Phase 1: Five focus groups were led with consumers in each country and 50 interviews conducted with stakeholders across the different countries. The data was analyzed according to a thematical analysis approach.
Phase 2: A questionnaire targeting 500 consumers in each of the 7 countries will be distributed in February 2024. Through a choice experiment and questions on the local context and on the perception of local food, it will allow to get complementary insight of the design of the digital tool.
Results Findings from the qualitative phase provided insight into the multidimensional and heterogeneous definition of what “short supply chain” or “local food” mean for the different stakeholders. This definition helps understand, in particular, why both stakeholders and consumers perceive many barriers to the use of digital tools in the consumption of sustainable food, especially because digital tools are perceived as being somewhat an antithesis to local food provisioning and waste reduction practices. The results from the quantitative phase may help to precise the conditions to go beyond these barriers.
Conclusion This research unravels the difficulty to combine digital tools and local food supply as they do not belong to the same universe for different stakeholders and provides indications to overpass these difficulties and a prototype of digital tool will be developed based on the results.
Source: Manual