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Food insecurity is a major concern for developing economies. Operational inadequacies get introduced with unorganized interactions among stakeholders in the food supply chain, affecting social, economic, environmental and operational (SEEO) aspects of a nation. This study analyzes India's largest food safety net program, Public Distribution System (PDS) and develops a perception-based model, mapping the root causes (of food insecurity) with possible solutions. The novelty lies in leveraging blockchain in the implementation of food traceability system.

Soft system methodology (SSM) is used to identify and analyze problems in PDS, leveraging the learning and inquiry process. It relies on system thinking and action research to create a defendable and rational model, which helps in proposing recommendations for addressing the problem.

Blockchain-enabled food traceability system increases transparency, thus enabling the fulfillment of basic food necessities for beneficiaries.

The proposed model enables policymakers to build a profound understanding of existing operational issues and provides insightful recommendations for making informed decisions to deal with the grave issue of food insecurity.

Unlike previous studies, this research attempts to understand operational inefficiencies during interactions among stakeholders. It proposes a perception-based conceptual model for the final implementation at the ground level. It also reveals significance of three systems: a delivery system, an enabling system empowering delivery system and a criteria system to control and monitor processes. This study thus bridges an important gap in the literature by proposing a blockchain-driven traceability system, under the control of criteria system, through the integration of system-thinking and action-research approach.

Extant literature in supply chain management tends to address a portion of the product flow to make food accessible to clients in need. The authors present a broader view of food insecurity and present nuances relevant to appreciate the complexities of dealing with this social problem.

The authors conducted an inductive study to reveal the deep meaning of the context as managers of nonprofit organizations (NPO) define and address food insecurity. The focus was on a delimited geographic area for capturing interactions among NPOs which have not been described previously.

This study describes the role of supply chains collaborating in unexpected ways in the not-for-profit context, leading to interesting insights for the conceptual development of service ecosystems. This is relevant because the solution for the food insecure stems from the orchestration of assistance provided by the many supply chains for social assistance.

The authors introduce two concepts: customer sharing and customer release. Customer sharing enables these supply chains behave like an ecosystem with no focal organization. Customer release is the opposite to customer retention, when the food insecure stops needing assistance.

The authors describe the use of customer-centric measures of success such improved health measured. The solution to food insecurity for an individual is likely to be the result of the orchestration of assistance provided by several supply chains.

The authors started asking who the client is and how the NPOs define food insecurity, leading to discussing contrasts between food access and utilization, between hunger relief and nourishment, between assistance and solution of the problem, and between supply chains and ecosystems.

Natural disasters cause serious operational risks and disruptions, which further impact the food supply in and around the disaster-impacted area. Resilient functions in the supply chain are required to absorb the impact of resultant disruptions in perishable food supply chains (FSC). The present study identifies specific resilient functions to overcome the problems created by natural disasters in the FSC context.

The quality function deployment (QFD) method is utilized for identifying these relations. Further, fuzzy term sets and the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) are used to prioritize the identified problems. The results obtained are employed to construct a QFD matrix with the solutions, followed by the technique for order of preference by similarity to the ideal solution (TOPSIS) on the house of quality (HOQ) matrix between the identified problems and functions.

The results from the study reflect that the shortage of employees in affected areas is the major problem caused by a natural disaster, followed by the food movement problem. The results from the analysis matrix conclude that information sharing should be kept at the highest priority by policymakers to build and increase resilient functions and sustainable crisis management in a perishable FSC network.

The study suggests practical implications for managing a FSC crisis during a natural disaster. The unique contribution of this research lies in finding the correlation and importance ranking among different resilience functions, which is crucial for managing a FSC crisis during a natural disaster.

This empirical research intends to examine factors influencing the adoption of renewable energy (RE) using a conceptual model of the consumer decision-making process.

This study uses a primary response-based survey to collect data from 668 respondents interested in adopting RE for their daily usage. The sample respondents were chosen through a multi-stage random stratified technique. The responses were analyzed through structural equation-based modeling techniques to discuss the findings and suggest further implications.

The findings suggest that factors like knowledge, policy incentives, sustainable development goals (SDGs-7, 11 and 13), socio-economic benefits and risk perception significantly impact the adoption of RE. Besides, risk perception mediates between environmental concerns and the adoption of RE. Also, age has a significant role in RE adoption.

The study finds the critical role of government in introducing financial incentives to reduce the initial cost of renewable adoption. Doing so will also promote clean and equitable energy access to society leading to further fulfillment of SDGs. Additionally, steps like knowledge enrichment, designing suitable policies for a manufacturer and public-friendly renewable market development will further facilitate renewable adoption in society.

With an objective to study the public perception and attitude towards renewable adoption, this empirical research is the first of its kind to carry out a real-time survey of the Indian population and suggest policy implications which would benefit all the concerned stakeholders.

Children's food insecurity experiences are largely unrepresented in academic literature. Parents and caregivers cannot always accurately evaluate their children's attitudes or experiences, and even within the same family unit, children and their parents may report differing views and experiences of family food insecurity. The purpose of this narrative review is to identify studies that include children's voices and their perceptions, understanding, and experience of food insecurity in the household.

This narrative review aimed to address the following questions: (1) “What research studies of household food insecurity include children's voices?” and (2) “Across these studies, how do children perceive, understand and experience food insecurity in the household?”. A database search was conducted in October 2022. After inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied, 16 articles remained for review.

The findings from this review were organised into three themes: Theme 1: Ways children coped with accessing food or money for food; Theme 2: Food-related strategies children used to avoid hunger; and Theme 3: Children attempt to mask food insecurity.

Future research should further explore the long-term consequences of social pressures and informal economic engagement on children's well-being and social development. By addressing the social determinants of food insecurity, this study can strive to create supportive environments that enable all children to access adequate nutrition and thrive.

Overall, the findings of this review demonstrate the significant social pressures that shape children's responses to food insecurity. Results suggest that children's decision-making processes are influenced by the desire to maintain social standing and avoid the negative consequences of being food insecure. As such, this review underscores the need for a comprehensive understanding of the social context in which food insecurity occurs and the impact it has on children's lives. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for developing effective interventions and policies addressing the multifaceted challenges food insecure children face.

This review has highlighted a need for interventions to incorporate trauma-informed strategies to protect children from and respond to the psychologically distressing experiences and impact of living in food insecure households.

This study aims to assess the household food insecurity in Malaysia during the initial phase of the movement control order (MCO) to provide insights into the prevalence and predictors of food insecurity in this context.

The research used an online cross-sectional survey between March 28 and April 28, 2020. The study collected data from the Radimer/Cornell Hunger Scale and a food insecurity instrument. Analytical tools included chi-square and logistic regression models.

Of the 411 participating households, 54.3% were food-secure, while 45.7% experienced varying food insecurity. Among these, 29.9% reported mild hunger-associated food insecurity, 8.5% experienced individual food insecurity and 7.3% reported child hunger. The study identified predictors for food insecurity, including household income, as those with total income of < RM 2,300 had 13 times greater odds (odds ratio [OR] 13.8; confidence interval [CI] 5.9–32.1; p < 0.001) than those with income of RM 5,600, marital status as divorced (OR 4.4; 95% CI 1.0–19.9; p-value = 0.05) or married (OR 1.04; 95% CI 0.52–2.1) compared to those who are single. Self-employed respondents had three times greater odds of living in a household experiencing food insecurity (OR 3.58; 95% CI 1.6–7.7; p-value = 0.001) than those in the private sector (OR 1.48; 95% CI 0.85–2.61) or experiencing job loss (OR 1.39; 95% CI 0.62–3.1) compared with those who reported being in full-time government employment.

This study acknowledged limitations, such as not considering various dimensions of food insecurity, such as coping strategies, nutritional support, diet quality and well-being, due to the complexity of the issue.

The study underscores the importance of targeted support for vulnerable groups and fostering collaborative efforts to address household food insecurity during crises like the MCOs.

The research offers insights into how to address household food insecurity and its impact on society.

It identifies predictors, quantifies increased odds and emphasizes the necessity of targeted policies and collaborative approaches for fostering resilient recovery and promoting well-being in vulnerable populations.

The study investigates the inter-linkages between geopolitical risk (GPR) and food price (FP).

By employing the bootstrap full- and sub-sample rolling-window Granger causality tests.

The empirical results show that there is a time-varying bidirectional causality between GPR and FP. High GPR leads to a rise in FP, suggesting that geopolitical events usually may disrupt supply and demand conditions in food markets, and even trigger global food crises. However, the negative effect of GPR on FP does not support this view in certain periods. This is mainly because GPR is also related to the global economic situation and oil price, which together have impacts on the food market. These results cannot always be supported by the inter-temporal capital asset pricing model, which states that GPR affects FP in a positive manner. Conversely, there is a positive impact of FP on GPR, indicating that the food market is an effective tool that can reflect global geopolitical environment.

In the context of the Russia–Ukraine conflict, these analyses can assist investors and policymakers to understand the sensitivity of FP to GPR. Also, it will provide significant revelations for governments to attach importance to the role of food price information in predicting geopolitical events, thus contributing to a more stable international environment.

This study aims to test the compensatory consumption theory with the explicit hypothesis that China's new-rich tend to waste relatively more food.

In this study, the authors use Heckman two-step probit model to empirically investigate the new-rich consumption behavior related to food waste.

The results show that new-rich is associated with restaurant leftovers and less likely to take them home, which supports the compensatory consumption hypothesis.

Understanding the empirical evidence supporting compensatory consumption theory may improve forecasts, which feed into early warning systems for food insecurity. And it also avoids unreasonable food policies.

This research is a first attempt to place food waste in a compensatory-consumption perspective, which sheds light on a new theory for explaining increasing food waste in developing countries.

This study aims to investigate the determinants of household behavioural intention towards household reducing, reusing and recycling behaviour of food waste management.

The data were collected from 670 households in Malaysia and analysed by using the partial least square method.

The findings reveal that motivation to participate, ability to participate and perceived benefits are the crucial factors that significantly influence households’ attitudes. Household attitude has a significant impact on household behavioural intention, whilst social influence and perceived behavioural control are not associated with it. Government support is positively related to perceived behavioural control. The result also indicates that household behavioural intention has a significant impact on household reducing, reusing and recycling behaviour.

The participants of this study were involved in home planning and food preparation in Malaysia. The individuals in charge of the household might have more awareness of food planning and waste control. Thus, it is recommended to adopt findings from other countries and learn from the experience of the local and international communities.

The households’ behavioural intentions can lead to the reducing, reusing and recycling behaviour of food waste management. The government policy mechanisms and households’ awareness can work effectively against food waste reduction because evaluations of the food waste programme were found to be scarce.

Food insecurity is one of the major social problems. Many people are not aware of the food waste impacts and consequences; thus, motivation, knowledge and information should be provided to the consumer through forums and campaigns.

The findings contribute to new insights of household behavioural intention towards food waste reduction management by assessing the determinants of household attitude and government support for food waste reduction management programmes towards household reducing, reusing and recycling behaviours.

This paper aims to evaluate the progress made in achieving sustainable development goal-2 (SDG 2) in India, with a focus on ending hunger, ensuring food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture. The assessment uses data from SDG Index reports, which offer a comprehensive overview of the advancements made by 28 states and 8 union territories (UTs) in India.

The evaluation is based on information derived from three editions of the SDG Index reports, initially published in 2018 and subsequently in 2019 and 2020. These reports provide a detailed analysis of the status and achievements of different states and UTs in relation to SDG 2. The categorization of states and UTs into aspirant, performer, front runner and achiever categories serves as a crucial framework for assessing the progress.

Despite concerted efforts by India, the majority of states and UTs are positioned in the aspirant and performer categories, suggesting that significant challenges persist in achieving SDG 2 targets. The results emphasize the necessity for stronger measures to elevate states and UTs to the categories of front-runners and achievers. The persistent challenges of malnutrition, hunger and their economic ramifications require immediate and strategic interventions to address these pressing concerns.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by providing a comprehensive analysis of the progress towards SDG 2 in India, using the insights from the SDG Index reports. The categorization framework used in this assessment offers a nuanced understanding of the challenges faced by different regions, highlighting the original contribution of this study. The findings underscore the urgency of targeted efforts to address malnutrition, hunger and related issues, emphasizing the importance of sustained commitment to achieving SDG 2 for the overall well-being of vulnerable populations.