The functioning of food value chains entails a complex organisation from farm to fork which is characterised by various governance forms and externalities which have shaped the overall food system. VALUMICS food value chain case studies: wheat to bread, dairy cows to milk, beef cattle to steak, farmed salmon to fillets and tomato to processed tomato were selected to enable explorative and empirical analysis to better understand the functioning of the food system and, to identify the main challenges that need to be addressed to improve sustainability, integrity, resilience, and fairness of European food chains.

The VALUMICS system analysis was executed through four operational phases starting with Groundwork & analysis including mapping specific attributes and impacts of food value chains and their externalities. This was followed by Case study baseline analysis, which provided input to the third phase on Modelling and exploration of future scenarios and finally Policy and synthesis of the overall work.

Olafsdottir, G., Bogason, S., Aubert, P.M., Barling, D., Thakur, M., Duric, I., Nicolau, M., McGarraghy, S., Sigurdardottir; H., Samoggia, A., Holden N.M., Čechura, L., Jaghdani, T.J., Svanidze, M., Esposito., G., Monticone, F., Fedato, C., Xhelili, A., Huber, E., Hargaden, V., Saviolidis, N M., Gorton, M., Hubbard, C., Kahiluoto, H., Hoang, V.(2021). Scenario analysis report with policy recommendations. An assessment of sustainability, resilience, efficiency and fairness and effective chain relationships in VALUMICS case studies. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D8.4, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 130 pages DOI:10.5281/zenodo.6534011

How can we move from attitudes and intentions to action and generate behavioural change towards more sustainable food consumption in Europe? This report helps answer this question by making recommendations to various stakeholder groups on how to support sustainable consumption of food. It draws from research and insights of the latest and most compelling pieces of evidence, including those of behavioural science, aimed at supporting more sustainable and healthier diets in real-life contexts.

• This report puts forward 14 recommendations to drive more sustainable food consumption in Europe, clustered into four main recommendation types: ‘choice environment’, ‘choice expansion’, ‘choice editing’ and ‘beyond choice’.
• The practical implementation of the recommendations discussed in the report is conditioned on a successful multi-stakeholder collaboration between policy makers, food industry actors and CSOs among the most important actors.
• Without underestimating the importance of innovation and creativity, it is crucial to capitalise on existing resources and initiatives and find ways of scaling them up.
• The effectiveness of the recommendations of this report will depend on a good understanding of the actual context of focus and should build upon existing or new pieces of behavioural insights that explain how and why people behave as they do. Moreover, it is important to consider consumers as active actors as opposed to passive ones with relatively no role in designing and shaping current frameworks.
• Various recommendations and insights in this report support the actions defined in the Farm to Fork Strategy under the specific goal to ‘promote sustainable food consumption and facilitate the shift to healthy, sustainable diets’

Generally, consumers value more environmentally friendly food supply chains and many report intentions to switch to more sustainable practices and diets. However, intentions often lag clear actions. For instance, far more consumers say they intend to reduce their consumption of single use plastics than have done so. Similarly, the number of consumers who pledge to reduce meat consumption on environmental and health grounds is much greater than the realised change. This highlights that more sustainable food consumption practices are often subject to intention-behaviour gaps. This section reviews the reasons for intention-behaviour gaps in relation to sustainable food consumption and the strategies that retailers may adopt to support change.

The goal is to conduct the LCA and Social LCA for the selected case studies representing specific instances of selected food supply chains to identify the environmental and social hotspots The objective is using life cycle analysis to model and identify areas to potentially improve the sustainability performance of these specific food supply chains in order to identify commonalities and differences by commodity, logistics and market.

The goal is to develop the functional specifications and design of a hybrid of system dynamics and agent based simulation model to be developed in WP7. The model will be applied to assess the impact of different transformations (policy interventions, demand, supply and trade shocks) in future scenarios towards fairer and sustainable food supply chains. It will focus on exploring opportunistic behaviours related to fair value distribution, and fair relations along the food value chain, and how it impacts the distribution of value added along food value chains.

This report presents the results from Task 4.4 – information and material flow analysis. The objective of Task 4.4 is to analyse the information and material flows in the selected case studies and to study their impact on supply chain decision making.

Thakur, M., Johansen, U., Jafarzadeh, S., Čechura, L., Rumankova, L., Kroupova, Z. Z., Jaghdani, T.J., Loveluck, W., Mehta, S., Aditjandra, P., Gresham, J., Esposito, G., Samoggia, A.,  lafsd ttir, G., Gudbrandsdottir, I., Schan, C. S., Sj berg, I., Richardsen, R., Haug, K. (2020). Report on Information and Material Flow Analysis for the selected case studies. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D4.3, SINTEF Ocean, Trondheim, 70 pages. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5105848

This report Del.4.1 Report on integrated event-driven framework for data collection is a deliverable for Task 4.2 and presents the event-driven methodology framework for process mapping and data collection for case studies. In this report, the salmon case study is used to demonstrate the methodology and model the different stages of salmon value chain in Norway. The technique presented in this document can be used to integrate key value chain indicators such as the product, process and sustainability data. This report also identifies the decisions made at different levels such as company, sector, national, EU to regulate the food value chain and optimise the production. The applications of the EPC model is further described in this report and specific examples on how the data availability and gaps can be identified are provided.

Thakur, M., Mehta, S., Sjøberg, I., Ólafsdóttir, G., Johansen, U.,  Duric, I., Čechura, L., Jaghdani, T.J., G., Samoggia, . (2018). Report on the integrated event-driven framework for data collection. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D4.1, SINTEF Ocean, Trondheim, 36 pages. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5105767

Recent biophysical scenarios have provided a clear picture of what the European food system should become by 2050 in order to stay within environmental limits (EAT-Lancet Commission, 2019; European Commission COM, 2018; Karlsson et al., 2017; Poux & Aubert, 2018). Although these modelling exercises depict a desirable long-term horizon, they leave completely open the question of how to get there – in other words, how supply chains should evolve, which actors will drive the change, and with what specific levers. Yet, radical shifts in production and consumption will require a significant reconfiguration of Food Value Chains (FVCs). This raises challenging economic, social and political considerations that are currently subject to heated debate.

Huber, E. Aubert, P.M. (2021). Lock-ins analysis: Developing Food Value Chain transition pathways, a stakeholder-based process. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D8.2, The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), Paris, 48 pages. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.5031644

The transition towards more sustainable food systems in Europe has put a key question on the table: how can we halve the consumption of high impact foods in Europe in the next decades, thereby also cutting by half their negative sustainability impacts? This report aims at con– tributing to this discussion, by analysing and showcasing the latest and most compelling pieces of evidence about behaviourally-informed interventions that support a shift towards more sustainable and healthier diets in real-life contexts.

Transportation has significant impact on food costs and the environment. It is a major contributor to carbon emissions, accounting for almost a quarter of the CO2 emissions in the EU, of which 30% is attributed to the food sector. This deliverable addresses the modelling of food chains’ transportation and logistics. It develops a robust model for policy support, which is applied to a specific case as a worked example. The approach can be used to model the transport and logistics of other food supply chains, given data availability.

Aditjandra, P., De, A., M., Gorton, M., Hubbard, C., Pang, G., Mehta, S., Thakur, M., Richardson, M., Bogasson, S., Olafsdottir, G. (2019) Report on findings on transportation and logistics of selected food value chains. VALUMICS “Understanding Food Value Chains and Network Dynamics”, funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme GA No 727243. Deliverable: D7.1, Newcastle University, UK, 94 pages.

Why do European consumers buy food the way they do? Which key factors drive Europeans’ food consumption patterns and how could they be used to create pathways toward sustainability? The VALUMICS project’s evidence-based report provides insights to what influences consumers the most in their food choices. The report brings together data across various countries, such as the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy. Through in-depth literature research, focus groups and expert consultations, the report provides a better understanding of the status quo, trends, motivations as well as barriers and opportunities towards more sustainable food consumption behaviours in general. The focus is on five product categories: Beef, dairy, salmon, tomatoes and bread.

This report presents findings from eight national studies into the governance of five European food value chains: liquid cow’s milk, beef steak, farmed salmon, processed tomato, and bread from wheat. Each study evaluates the governance of the value chain through the different stages of production, processing and retail, following the transformation from farmed/grown commodity to final food product. 

The report provides a framework that categorises the different European Union (EU) policies, laws and governance actions identified as impacting upon food value chains in the defined areas of: fairer trading practices, food integrity (food safety and authenticity), and sustainability collaborations along food value chains

Gianandrea Esposito, Rossen Kazakov, Seán McGarraghy, Antonella Samoggia_EURO Athens Conference

Gudrun Olafsdottir_UoI_EAAE Webinar 4 On-line

Maitri Thakura, Shraddha Mehta_SINTEF Ocean_Mapping decision mechanisms in food supply systems – A case of Norwegian salmon supply chain

Shraddha Mehta on behalf of SINTEF and UCD presented a poster on the preliminary results from the Social LCA indicator survey in Task 4.5

Applying System Analysis and System Dynamics Modelling in Complex Research Projects -the Case of VALUMICS

Anna HuldaOlafsdottir, Ingunn Yr Gudbrandsdottir, Harald Ulrik Sverdrup, Gunnar Stefansson, Gudrun Olafsdottir, Sigurdur Bogason. Industrial Engineering, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

Modeling of integrated supply-, value-and decision chains within food systems

Ingunn Gudbrandsdottir, Anna Olafsdottir, Harald Sverdrup, Sigurdur Bogason, Gudrun Olafsdottir and Gunnar Stefansson

Giving policy makers opportunities to incentivise flexible work schedules and routines, in line with business requirements while adequate to the worker needs (family commitments, availability, etc). The possibility of new ways of work were one of the main outcomes of the current pandemic.

For more information, see Xhelili, A. & Nicolau, M. (2021). From intention to action: Multi-stakeholder recommendation for making sustainable food consumption a reality. Wuppertal. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5337036

LCA models were developed for the three case studies of the VALUMICS project -butter (representing dairy sector), salmon fillet (representing aquaculture sector) and beef steak (representing animal production sector). Check out the VALUMICS article featured in the March 2021 EAS magazine issue

CHEN, W., HOLDEN N.M., MEHTA, S., THAKUR, M., OLAFSDOTTIR G. (2020) Report on LCA and SocialLCA of the selected food products. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D4.4, University College Dublin, Dublin, 52 pages

VALUMICS is developing approaches and tools to analyse the structure, dynamics, resilience and impact of food chains on food security, economic development and the environment. EAS is one of the 20 VALUMICS partners. Read the full article from the EAS magazine September issue

Authors: G. Olafsdottir, S. Mehta, R. Richardsen, D. Cook, I.Y. Gudbrandsdottir, M. Thakur, A. Lane, S.G. Bogason

Explore the work that has been done by VALUMICS during its first year on system dynamics causality-based modelling framework analysis. Check out the VALUMICS article featured in the March EAS magazine issue

Authors: I.Y. Gudrbrandsdottir, G. Olafsdottir, S.G. Bogason