Sustainability in Vegetable Supply Chains : Case Study on Agriculture Systems and their Growth Dependency

Abstract

In 2015, the United Nations agreed to work together to achieve sustainable development in the world described by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Since then, the issue of sustainability has become increasingly important at the global, national, regional, and local levels. The transformation to a sustainable economy also plays an important role in the fight against the climate crisis, as the latest IPCC report once again confirmed. It also states that a transformation of all economic sectors is necessary to mitigate the climate crisis to a significant extent. Therefore, it is also important to make food production and supply sustainable and create sustainable food supply chains. This paper looks into this aspect with a focus on vegetable supply chains. It especially looks at the length of vegetable supply chains and how sustainability is affected by the geographical extension of production and distribution systems. As we live in a globalized world the global mobility of goods also affects vegetables. E. g. vegetables consumed in Germany may come from all over the world. In terms of sustainability, however, this global mobility may be counterproductive. Therefore, this paper examines the influence of the geographical length of supply chains on their sustainability. For this purpose, local and regional as well as trans-regional and global vegetable supply chains are considered. The study is based on expert interviews with representatives of organizations from different vegetable supply chains. The participants represent food retailers and in- termediaries as well as farmers and community-supported agriculture initiatives. The analysis of the data shows that other factors than the length of supply chains have a high influence on its sustainability. It also shows that most of today’s vegetable supply chains are growth-dependent. However, there are business models that allow vegetable production and distribution in a sufficient oriented approach.