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Food sustainability is a world-acknowledged issue that requires urgent integrated solutions at multi-levels. This study aims to explore how food firms can improve their sustainability performance through digital traceability practices, considering the mediating effect of sustainability-oriented innovation (SOI) and the moderating effect of supply chain learning (SCL) for the food supply chain therein.

Hierarchical regression with a moderated mediation model is used to test the proposed hypotheses with a sample of 359 food firms from four provinces in China.

Digital traceability has a significant positive impact on the three pillars of sustainability performances among food firms. SOI (product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation) mediates the relationship between digital traceability and sustainability performance. SCL plays moderating roles in the linkage between digital traceability and both product and process innovation, respectively.

This paper contributes as one of the first studies to develop digital traceability practices and their sustainability-related improvements for Chinese food firms; it extends studies on supply chain traceability to a typical emerging market. This finding can support food sustainability practice in terms of where and how to invest in sustainability innovation and how to improve economic, environmental and social performance.

This study examines the performance of India's food processing sector by estimating its output growth, technical efficiency (TE) and input-driven growth (IDG)

This study used panel data from six food processing manufacturing industries for the period 2000–01 to 2017–18. Technical efficiency and input-driven growth was measured using the parametric half-normal stochastic frontier production function.

The findings of this study showed that the estimated average technical efficiency is 86.6%, which specifies that the Indian food processing sector is technically inefficient. In addition, the output growth rate is 5.5%, driven by high doses of inputs (5.7%), whereas there is no indication of constant returns to scale. However, the food processing sector has experienced more input-driven expansion than either technological or efficiency changes.

This study is limited to India's organized manufacturing food processing sector; the aggregate macro data at a three-digit level based on the national industrial classification (NIC) was used. This study provides robust estimates for industrialists and processors, as well as concrete policy formulations on how overdoses of inputs may lead to high exploitation of resources, whereas outputs can be augmented by implementing upgraded and new technologies.

Previous research has estimated the total factor productivity and technical efficiency only in order to analyze the food sector's performance, but none of the studies have evaluated the share of inputs in growth performance and efficiency. Therefore, this study contributes by measuring growth performance and the share of inputs in the growth performance of India's food processing sector.

This paper aims to analyse how local agri-food systems (LAFS), compared to other production models, can offer innovative responses to the important environmental challenges facing food production under the twin transition. These responses are more conducive to community inclusion and local development.

The paper combines territorial development, clusters and industrial districts literature with studies on agri-food industry environmental problems and twin transition technologies to develop an agri-food systems typology. This typology is based on a territorial approach to environmental challenges of food production and serves to illustrate the ways in which LAFS can provide innovative responses to these challenges.

The study allows to visualise the differences between LAFS and other agri-food production models, showing how the operationalisation and implementation of digitisation occur at territorial level and how rural communities are involved in the process. The theoretical proposal emphasises not assuming that technology is inherently beneficial but ensuring that its implementation is inclusive and generates social value for the communities.

The paper aims to enrich future research by adopting a territorial perspective to study the twin transition challenges associated with food production systems.

The primary objective of this study is to investigate the application of blockchain technology (BCT) in the agri-food supply chain, focusing on traceability and food safety.

The study employed a semi-structured interview method with representatives from the cherry supply chain to evaluate their awareness and acceptance of BCT's impact. Additionally, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was utilized to determine digital investment priorities in supply chain strategies. By applying the supply chain operations reference (SCOR) model framework to the cherry supply chain, the study aimed to address the question “Which process model is suitable for implementing BCT in the agri-food supply chain?”

The global agri-food supply chains are characterized by significant food losses, escalating prices along the chain, and food safety risks. Concurrently, consumer concerns regarding food safety, quality and transparency are on the rise. BCT, with its ability to ensure data integrity, immutability, and seamless tracking of chain movements, presents immense potential as a secure infrastructure in the agri-food supply chain traceability.

The developed analytic framework and the study's findings can be adapted to different sectors and different sub-sectors within agri-food supply chains.

Omnichannel sales have provided new impetus for the development of catering merchants. The authors thus focus on how catering merchants should manage capacities at the ordering, production and delivery stages to meet customers’ needs in different channels under third-party platform delivery and merchant self-delivery. This is of great significance for the development of the omnichannel catering industry.

This paper formulates the capacity decisions of omnichannel catering merchants under the third-party platform delivery and merchant self-delivery mode. The authors mainly use queuing theory to analyze the queuing behavior of online and offline customers, and the impact of waiting time on customer shopping behavior. In addition, the authors also characterize the merchant’s capacity by the rate in queuing model.

The authors find that capacities at ordering stage and food production stage are composed of base capacities and safety capacities, but the delivery capacities only have the latter. And in the self-delivery mode, merchants can develop higher safety capacities by charging delivery fees. The authors prove that regardless of the delivery mode, omnichannel sales can bring higher profits to merchants by integrating demand.

The authors focus on analyzing the capacity management of omnichannel catering merchants at the ordering, production and delivery stages. And the authors also add the delivery process into the omnichannel for analysis, so as to solve the problem of capacity decision-making under different delivery modes. The management of delivery capacity and its impact on other stages’ capacities are not covered in other literature studies, which is one of the main innovations of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the challenges surrounding the implementation of digital technology (DT) agri-food supply chain (AFSC) and explore how these challenges relate to the various sustainability dimensions. Additionally, it aims to assess how these challenges are interconnected in relation to achieving sustainable development goals (SDGs).

The study employs a mixed-method approach utilizing the EFA-ISM-Fuzzy DEMATEL technique. To support and validate the findings, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) categorized 12 critical challenges in sustainable dimensions from 141 participants' responses. Furthermore, interpretive structural modeling (ISM) and decision-making trial and evaluation (DEMATEL) methods were used to obtain the interrelationship and hierarchical structure of the challenges.

The study identified 12 critical challenges while adopting DT in AFSC. These challenges were categorized into four sustainable dimensions: technological, economic, environmental and social. These challenges hinder the achievement of SDGs as well. Lack of regulatory and policy framework with security and privacy issues were the key challenges faced while adopting DT. These observations emphasize the necessity for government and policymakers to prioritize tackling the identified challenges to successfully endorse and execute DT initiatives in AFSC while also fulfilling the SDGs.

The implication underscores the need for collaboration among various stakeholders, such as governments, policymakers, businesses and researchers. By collectively addressing these challenges, DT can be leveraged optimally, fostering sustainable practices and making progress toward achieving the SDGs within the AFSC.

The study uses a combination technique of EFA and ISM-DEMATEL to identify the challenges faced in Indian AFSC while adopting DT and categorizes the interrelation between the challenges along with fulfilling the SDGs.

The main purpose of this paper was to evaluate the validation process of food safety control measures.

The validation of control measures has been analyzed at 50 food companies in Serbia. The sample included companies that produce food of both plant and animal origin and have certified food safety management systems. A total of 156 control measures that combat physical hazards (41.6%), followed by microbial hazards (34.0%) and chemical hazards (24.4%), have been analyzed. To enable quantification of the validation protocols, each control measure was assigned a score.

The validation scores showed that the highest level of validation was observed in large companies, as opposed to small and medium-sized companies (p < 0.05). The type of food safety hazards and the food sector did not reveal any statistical differences in-between the scores. The main approach to validating control measures was referring to the technical documentation of equipment used (52.6%), followed by scientific and legal requirements (30.7%). Less than 20% of the analyzed control measures were validated with operational data collected on-site. No mathematical modeling was observed for the sampled food companies. Future steps should include the development of validation guides for different types of control measures and training modules.

This study can serve as an improvement guide for food safety consultants, food safety auditors, certification bodies, inspection services, food technologists and food managers.

This study is one of the first to provide an insight into how food companies validate their control measures to combat microbial, chemical and physical food safety hazards.

The purpose of this study is to increase awareness of current supply chain (SC) security-related issues by providing an extensive analysis of existing SC security solutions and their limitations. The security of SCs has received increasing attention from researchers, due to the emerging risks associated with their distributed nature. The increase in risk in SCs comes from threats that are inherently similar regardless of the type of SC, thus, requiring similar defence mechanisms. Being able to identify the types of threats will help developers to build effective defences.

In this work, we provide an analysis of the threats, possible attacks and traceability solutions for SCs, and highlight outstanding problems. Through a comprehensive literature review (2015–2021), we analysed various SC security solutions, focussing on tracking solutions. In particular, we focus on three types of SCs: digital, food and pharmaceutical that are considered prime targets for cyberattacks. We introduce a systematic categorization of threats and discuss emerging solutions for prevention and mitigation.

Our study shows that the current traceability solutions for SC systems do not offer a broadened security analysis and fail to provide extensive protection against cyberattacks. Furthermore, global SCs face common challenges, as there are still unresolved issues, especially those related to the increasing SC complexity and interconnectivity, where cyberattacks are spread across suppliers.

This is the first time that a systematic categorization of general threats for SC is made based on an existing threat model for hardware SC.

Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) is a global pandemic that emerged at the end of 2019 and caused disruptions in global supply chains, particularly in the food supply chains that exposed the vulnerability of today’s food supply chain in a major disruption which provided a unique research opportunity. This review explores the current research direction for food supply chain resilience and identifies gaps for future research in preparing for future major global pandemics.

This article presents a review of food supply chain resilience followed a systematic literature review of the business and management-based studies related to the food supply chain in Covid-19 published between December 2019 and December 2021 to identify the immediate issues and responses that need to be addressed in the event of future disruptions in food supply chains due to new global health threats.

The study revealed the need for more literature on food supply chain resilience, particularly resilience to a major global pandemic. The study also uncovered the sequence of events in a major pandemic and identified some strategies for building resilience to potential future risks of such an event.

The limitations of this study are apparent. Firstly, the selection of databases is not comprehensive. Due to time limitations, authoritative publishers such as Springer, Emerald, Wiley and Taylor & Francis were not selected. Secondly, a single author completed the literature quality testing and text analysis, possibly reducing the credibility of the results due to subjective bias. Thirdly, the selected literature are the studies published during the immediate event of Covid-19, and before January 2022, other research studies may have been completed but were still in the state of auditing at this time.

This paper is the first study that provides a detailed classification of the immediate challenges to the food supply chain faced in both upstream and downstream nodes during a major global disruption. For researchers, this clearly shows the immediate difficulties faced at each node of the food supply chain, which provides research topics for future studies.

The food supply chain worldwide has suffered severely due to the COVID-19 pandemic countermeasures. Previous research suggests that business model innovation (BMI) could be a viable solution for recovering from the pandemic and fostering organizational resilience. This study analyzes the capabilities that enable food companies to innovate their business model and thereby increase organizational resilience.

Results were obtained using a multiple-case study approach consisting of 15 companies along the entire food supply chain. Managers and decision-makers were interviewed, and the collected insights were enriched with additional material.

The results show several capabilities that enable companies to innovate their business model due to disruption. These capabilities are categorized into four phases based on the processual representation of BMIs.

This study contributes to the understanding of BMI in the food supply chain and provides empirical evidence on the potential for business recovery through BMI.