Traditional Food Chain Research Articles

Innovation in traditional food products in Europe: Do sector innovation activities match consumers’ acceptance?

Traditional food products are subject to an increased interest in Europe. Innovations, though controversial in the context of traditional food, are essential to maximally cope with this opportunity. So far, only few studies have concentrated on innovation in the traditional food sector. In this paper sector and consumer data are combined in order to validate to what extent innovations in the traditional food sector match with consumers’ acceptance. Sector innovations were explored through 270 interviews, covering 90 traditional food chains in three European countries (Belgium, Italy and Hungary). Consumers’ innovation acceptance was investigated using a quantitative survey approach with 2429 respondents in Belgium, Italy and Poland. In general, both the sector and the consumers were open towards innovations in traditional food products. In addition, the innovation activities of the sector were matching well with the innovations accepted by consumers. Throughout, preserving the traditional character of the food was stressed as a prerequisite for innovations in traditional food products.

Towards the development of innovative strategies for traditional food chains in the EU.

Organizations no longer compete as independent entities, but as chains (Christopher, 1998; Cox, 1999; Lambert, Cooper, 2000). Consequently, chain strategies became more important in creating competitive advantage (Vickery et al., 2003; Gunasekaran et al., 2004). Despite the growing recognition of the importance of chain strategies, many chains active in the agri-business sector still face difficulties in developing common chain strategies and implementing them collaboratively to generate additional mutual gains and savings. Chains lacking a chain strategy and having short-term perspectives face difficulties in envisaging and implementing cooperative solutions to problems they cannot manage alone. Despite this recognition, the actual development of such chain strategies lags behind because of some particular issues which still need to be addressed (e.g. vision, mission, values or action plans). Therefore, the objective of this paper is to identify and consolidate chain members’ goals, to select a minimum set of key goals and to confront these chain goals with consumer preferences. This way, the paper develops the vision of traditional food chains in the EU, as a first step of strategy development. First, chain members goals are identified and consolidated with the help of approximately 100 stakeholders (suppliers, focal companies, customers) from three European countries representing 5 traditional food product categories (cheese, beer, dry ham, dry sausage and white pepper). The most important goals of traditional food chains are to maintain traditionalism, to improve responsiveness, to maintain superior quality and to create chain balance. These chain goals are tested against the perception of 4828 consumers from six European countries (Belgium, France, Italy, Norway, Poland and Spain). As a result, the vision of traditional food chains is developed: the European traditional food sector envisions a competitive sector maintaining the traditional character and superior quality of their food product(s) via more efficient and responsive chains where risks and benefits are distributed in a balanced way between the members.

Performance imbalances in the chain: EU traditional food sector

Organizations nowadays no longer competeas independent entities, but as chains(Christopher, 1998; Cox, 1999; Lambertand Cooper, 2000). Hence, being part of a well-performing chain is crucial for the future of the individual food firm, especially in the context of the globalizing economy. As a result, the objective of this study is to identify performance imbalances of traditional food chains.Therefore, quantitative data were collected via individual interviews with 271 chain member (91 suppliers, 91 focal companies and 89 customers) of 91 traditional food chains from three European countries(Belgium, Italy and Hungary), representing six different traditional food product categories (cheese, beer, ham, sausage, white pepper and bakery). The results differentiate six different kinds of chain imbalances, namely: dyadic upper and lower, up-and down stream, internal and external indicate both dyadic and chain-wise imbalance. Most chain imbalances are noticed in relation to lowering logistic costs and to reducing lead time. Future research should extend the list of performance indicators with parameters other than economical ones such as ecological and social ones.

Innovation and collaboration in traditional food chain networks

Abstract This paper aims to explore innovations implemented by SMEs in the traditional food sector and how chain network members are contributing to this process. Focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were conducted with suppliers, food manufacturers and customers in three European countries with different cultural backgrounds (Italy, Hungary and Belgium). The results show that the members of traditional food chain networks focus mainly on product innovation and least on organisational innovation. Collaboration between the chain network members is an important factor for enhancing the innovation competence of the firms. However, the collaboration intensity depends on the position of the members in the chain network. Further studies could focus on quantitative research to determine whether a higher level of collaboration among all chain network members leads to a higher level of innovation competence in SMEs. Moreover, the direction of the relationship between innovation competence and collaboration should be explored.

Food web structure in the recently flooded Sep Reservoir as inferred from phytoplankton population dynamics and living microbial biomass.

Phytoplankton dynamics, bacterial standing stocks and living microbial biomass (derived from ATP measurements, 0.7-200 mm size class) were examined in 1996 in the newly flooded (1995) Sep Reservoir ('Massif Central,' France), for evidence of the importance of the microbial food web relative to the traditional food chain. Phosphate concentrations were low, N:P ratios were high, and phosphate losses converted into carbon accounted for <50% of phytoplankton biomass and production, indicating that P was limiting phytoplankton development during the study. The observed low availability of P contrasts with the high release of "directly" assimilable P often reported in newly flooded reservoirs, suggesting that factors determining nutrient dynamics in such ecosystems are complex. The phosphate availability, but also the water column stability, seemed to be among the major factors determining phytoplankton dynamics, as (i) large-size phytoplankton species were prominent during the period of increasing water column stability, whereas small-size species dominated phytoplankton assemblages during the period of decreasing stability, and (ii) a Dinobryon divergens bloom occurred during a period when inorganic P was undetectable, coinciding with the lowest values of bacterial standing stocks. Indication of grazing limitation of bacterial populations by the mixotrophic chrysophyte D. divergens (in late spring) and by other potential grazers (mainly rotifers in summer) seemed to be confirmed by the Model II or functional slopes of the bacterial vs phytoplankton regressions, which were always <0.63. Phytoplankton biomass was not correlated with phosphorus sources and its contribution was remarkably low relative to the living microbial biomass which, in contrast, was positively correlated with total phosphorus in summer. We conclude that planktonic microheterotrophs are strongly implicated in the phosphorus dynamics in the Sep Reservoir, and thus support the idea that an important amount of matter and energy flows through the "microbial loop" and food web, shortly after the flooding of a reservoir.

Impact of Intraguild Predation and Stage Structure on Simple Communities along a Productivity Gradient

We analyze the consequences of intraguild predation and stage structure for the possible composition of a three-species community consisting of resource, consumer, and predator. Intraguild predation, a special case of omnivory, induces two major differences with traditional linear food chain models: the potential for the occurrence of two alternative stable equilibria at intermediate levels of resource productivity and the extinction of the consumer at high productivities. At low productivities, the consumer dominates, while at intermediate productivities, the predator and the consumer can coexist. The qualitative behavior of the model is robust against addition of an invulnerable size class for the consumer population and against addition of an initial, nonpredatory stage for the predator population, which means that the addition of stage structure does not change the pattern. Unless the top predator is substantially less efficient on the bottom resource, it tends to drive the intermediate species extinct over a surprisingly large range of productivities, thus making coexistence generally impossible. These theoretical results indicate that the conditions for stable food chains involving intraguild predation cannot involve strong competition for the bottommost resource.

Geographical variations in the trophic structure of the plankton community along a eutrophic–mesotrophic–oligotrophic transect

The geographical variations in trophic structure of the plankton community, as defined by total and relative carbon biomass of phytoplankton (PP), bacteria (BA), heterotrophic nanoflagellates (HNF), microzooplankton (MZ), and herbivorous (HNZ) and carnivorous net‐zooplankton (CNZ), were investigated along an inshore–offshore transect from the innermost part of Osaka Bay to the Pacific Ocean off Kii Channel, Japan, in June 1991. Based on physico‐chemical properties of the water and topographical features, the transect was divided into three trophic areas, i.e. eutrophic, mesotrophic and oligotrophic ones. The average carbon biomass of the total plankton community was highest (438 mg m−3) in the inshore eutrophic area, and declined steeply offshore (141 and 26.6 mg m−3 in the mesotrophic and oligotrophic areas, respectively). In the offshore oligotrophic area, the relative biomass of BA to PP and the relative biomass of small heterotrophs (i.e. BA, HNF and MZ) to the total heterotrophs were higher than in the other areas, indicating that the microbial food chain predominated. In the mesotrophic area, the biomass of HNZ (primarily copepods) was conspicuously high, even higher than that of PP, suggesting that the traditional grazing food chain prevailed. Because of this short food chain, a productive fishing ground is formed there. In the eutrophic area, the biomass of HNZ was much smaller relative to the enormous biomass of PP, indicating that a considerable amount of primary production was not utilized directly by the metazoan zooplankton. However, the relative contribution of the small heterotrophs to the total heterotrophs’ biomass was higher in this area, as in the oligotrophic area.

Volatilization: a soil degassing coefficient for iodine

Iodine, an element essential to some animals, is ubiquitous in the biosphere. Unlike other metallic elements, molecular I is volatile, and other inorganic species present in aerated soils, such as I − and IO 3 −, may also volatize as hydrides, hydrogen iodide (HI), or hydrogen iodates (HIO 3, HIO 4). Methyl iodide has been measured in soils, and it is likely evolved from soils and plants. The long-lived radioisotope 129I is abundant in nuclear wastes, and its high solubility in groundwater makes it an important element in the performance assessment of underground disposal facilities. Overestimates of soil I residence half-times by traditional foodchain models may be due to underestimation of volatilization. Field and lysimeter experiments over a 3-year period, and direct trapping experiments in the laboratory are reported. The results, combined with values from the literature, indicate the soil I degassing coefficient for a wide range of soil types, vegetated and bare, wet and dry, is lognormally distributed with a geometric mean of 2·1 x 10 −2 year −1, a range of 1·8 x 10 −4 to 1 year −1 and a geometric standard deviation of 3·0. The results of a biosphere model simulation including degassing reduces soil I concentrations fivefold and increases air concentrations 25-fold at steady state, compared to simulations without degassing.

Ecology, thermodynamics and H.T. Odum's conjectures.

The central rôle of energy in all life processes has led to the development of numerous hypotheses, conjectures and theories on the relationships between thermodynamics and ecological processes. In this paper we examine the theoretical and empirical support for these developments, and in particular for the widely published set of thermodynamic conjectures developed by H.T. Odum, in which the maximum power principle is put forward as a generic feature of evolution in ecosystems. Although they are widely used, we argue that many of the ecological studies that have adopted the ideas encapsulated in Odum's work have done so without being aware of some of the fundamental problems underlying this approach. We discuss alternative ways in which a general available-work concept could be constructed for use as a numeraire in an energy-centered ecological theory or paradigm. In so doing, we examine what is meant by material accessibility and energy stocks and flows with respect to traditional food web and food chain theories, and relate these to results from the evolutionary dynamics of ecosystems. We conclude that the various forms and uses of energy bound up in essential ecosystem processes present a formidable obstacle to obtaining an operational definition of a general, aggregated available-work concept, a prerequisite for the systems approach of Odum and others. We also show that the prototypical derivations of the maximum power principle, and its interpretation, are contradicted on many scales both by empirical data and models, thereby invalidating the maximum power principle as a general principle of ecological evolution. The conclusions point to the fundamental problem of trying to describe ecosystems in a framework which has a one-dimensional currency.

A difference in structure between ecosystems in strongly stratified waters and in those that are only weakly stratified

The ratio of respiration to maximal photosynthesis in small diatoms is low so they can survive in weakly stratified water. In contrast, the same ratio for dinoflagellates is three times as high and they need waters that are strongly stratified. Some successional phenomena may be explicable in this way. The great fisheries depend on spring or autumn outbursts in temperate waters and on upwelh'ng areas in regions, equatorward of 40° latitude. It is suggested that they are linked to the small diatoms, in traditional food chains, in weakly stratified waters.

A simulation analysis of continental shelf food webs

Energy flow through continental shelf food webs was examined using a simulation model. The model structure expands the two traditional marine food chains of phytoplankton-zooplankton-pelagic fish and benthos-demersal fish into a complex web which includes detritus, dissolved organic matter (DOM), bacteria, protozoa, and mucus net feeders. Simulation of energy flux for different shelf systems using the expanded web revealed that heterotrophic microorganisms and their predators account for a significant component of the energy flux in the continental shelf ecosystem. Contrary to previous models, where all phytoplankton were considered to be grazed by zooplankton, our simulation results indicate that only slightly more than 50% of the annual net primary production is grazed. A substantial quantity of the phytoplankton production directly becomes detritus. Bacteria mineralize detritus and DOM produced by phytoplankton and other components of the food web, converting these to biomass with high efficiency. Consequently, the model predicts that planktonic bacterial production is equivalent to zooplankton production. Exclusion of the bacteria requires the assumption that all DOM is either exported from the system or consumed by another component of the food web. Neither of these assumptions can be supported by present knowledge of the dynamics of DOM in the sea. Model simulations were also employed to test the hypothesis that production exceeds consumption on continental shelves, resulting in exports of 50% of the annual primary production. Simulations of shelves with high rates of primary production resulted in a particulate export of 27% and realistic estimates of secondary production. Results of other simulations suggest that shelves with lower primary production cannot export production and still maintain the macrobenthos and their predators. General properties about continental shelves can also be inferred from the model. From simulations of shelves of differing primary production, nanoplankton are predicted to account for a greater proportion of the primary production in nutrient limited systems. Benthic production appears to be related to both the quantity of primary production and the sinking rates of the phytoplankton. The model indicates that zooplankton fecal inputs to the shelf benthos are only a small portion of the total detrital flux, leading to the prediction that fecal pellets are of little significance in determining benthic production. Finally, the model generates production efficiencies that are highly variable depending on the type of system and kind of populations involved. We argue that the assumed ecological efficiency of 10% should be abandoned for continental shelves and other ecosystems.