With globalization and the increase in population, the distance between the producer and the consumer has increased, with many intermediaries being added in the supply chain that makes it difficult to follow the treatment of the product, causing problems such as extensive food waste, food security, environmental damage, unfair distribution of added value and profits among chain members and so forth, as well as provide reasons for an increasing interest in the quality of food, locally produced food and food producing practices.

This has led to a trend called Short Food Supply Chain that seeks to go back to the roots to pursue economic, environmental and social sustainability, revitalizing the rural population and strengthening the relationships between producers and between consumers and producers, while gaining control over the sale price by reducing the number of intermediaries.

The problem with SFSC is that, since there are few intermediaries, producers must cover the marketing and distribution of their products, something of which they lack specialized knowledge, with the main problem being the spoilage of the food during its distribution. Therefore, SFSCs require corresponding innovative logistics solutions, like smart packaging to ensure the state of the food and the hiring of LPS and freelancers to whom to delegate the distribution.

Another way to solve this problem has to do with the relationship between producers mentioned in the second paragraph. The relationship between the producers takes place through alliances (or clusters of producers), where producers share resources with each other, including those for marketing and distribution. This is the case of the organic farms in Berguedà, with Salt de Colom sharing its facilities with the other farms to prepare the orders and send them together to their customers, many of whom share among all of them.

References

Sociedad Española Agricultura Ecológica, S. E. A. E. (2020, November 25). Vídeo d´experiències: Cal Pauet – Ecoavícola – dpagès – salt del colom – 7é simposi pae. YouTube. Retrieved March 27, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wUpWbASO5U

Todorovic, V., Maslaric, M., Bojic, S., Jokic, M., Mircetic, D., & Nikolicic, S. (2018). Solutions for more sustainable distribution in the short food supply chains. Sustainability, 10(10), 3481. https://doi.org/10.3390/su10103481