The Impact of Digitalization on Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management

Abstract

The food supply chain includes all activities from the transformation of inputs to the creation of the final product and its consumption, that is, all activities from the farm to the retail shelf. With the increase in complexity, actors in food supply chains face greater risks in the market so they must follow the latest trends and changes in the food market, and react quickly to challenges. In addition to economic, food supply chain management faces sustainability challenges as well. Instead of focusing only on their own growth and expansion, actors in food supply chains must consider how their business affect the environment and the interests of their communities. On the other side, consumers demand realtime updated information on food they consume and they want to know if the food they are consuming is environmentally and socially sustainable or not. For this reason food product traceability, safety and sustainability issues have become a crucial concern to food retailers and everyone else in the food supply chain. The aim of this paper is to point out digitalization as a solution to those issues. Particularly blockchain as an emerging transformative technology for supply chain management. Secondary data and methods of induction, deduction, synthesis ana analysis were used for the purpose of writing this paper.