18. Sustainable Food Supply Chain Design

Supply Chain Management (SCM) has become part of the c-management agenda in Western countries since the 1990s, particularly in the manufacturing and retail industries (Chopra and Meindl 2012). More recently, interest in SCM has also been growing in the agrifood industry, both in developed and developing countries. Executives of agrifood companies are aware that successful coordination, integration, and management of key business processes in the supply chain will determine their competitive success. Sustainable Food Supply Chain Management (SFSCM) refers to all forward processes in the food chain, like procurement of materials, production and distribution, as well as the reverse processes to collect and process returned used or unused products and/or parts of products in order to ensure a socioeconomically and ecologically sustainable recovery (Bloemhof and van Nunen 2008).