Dynamics of Food Value Chains: Resilience, Fairness and Sustainability

For farmers–growers, the routes to market can be complex as their produce moves through the food value chain to the final consumer. The workings, management and governance of food value chains, in turn, shape what is grown and where it is grown in agriculture, horticulture and aquaculture. The resilience of food chains to environmental, economic, societal, geo-political, pandemic and climate-related weather shocks is a key determinant of the food and nutrition security of the food supply to modern societies. The relationships between the major actors in the supply chains determine the share of the value of the final product that the farmers–growers and the other actors receive. Fairness, as an outcome in the distribution of value, and as a set of processes in how the distribution is determined, has attracted the attention of policymakers. For example, the European Union has introduced legislative measures to prohibit unfair trading practices between businesses in food value chains and greater transparency of price distribution, through market monitoring and reporting systems. The Fairtrade movement was based on the need to provide farmers–growers and their rural communities with adequate rewards for their production in cross-continental supply chains. Many food value chains are dependent upon low-paid, often precarious and immigrant labour, from harvests to packing, through to food service and retail, raising questions about social sustainability. The material and information flow through food chains, and their energy and environmental life cycle impacts serve to generate external environmental costs along the chain, as well as associated health benefits, costs and waste.