ABSTRACT
Introduction: How food is produced, processed, distributed, and consumed significantly impacts the sustainability of food supply chains. Short food supply chains (SFSCs) have been promoted as an alternative approach to offer sustainable solutions. However, empirical studies provide mixed evidence, and the findings greatly vary based on context. This study explores the social, economic, and environmental sustainability practices in Atlantic Canada's SFSCs from the perspective of farm businesses (producers). Methods: A semi-structured survey was conducted among 64 farmers/producers who participated in Atlantic Canadian SFSCs. Participants were asked what channel they used to sell their products and how far this location is in comparison to the production location if sold to an intermediary, how they believe they could better to improve the sustainability of their production methods, what barriers stood in their way of implementation, and how supply chain supporters could help achieve their sustainability goals. Results: The findings show that most farm businesses linked to SFCSs have applied ecologically sound production methods such as organic farming, IPM, or other sustainable practices, including regenerative agriculture and no-till farming. Over two-thirds of farm businesses applied sustainable practices such as pasture rotations, green fertilizers, low-carbon couriers, locally sourced inputs, and compostable or recyclable packaging materials. Farm businesses in the Atlantic Provinces highly value the social sustainability of SFSCs, followed by economic and environmental sustainability. Most farm businesses linked to SFSCs were robust to supply- and demand-side shocks, registered a low number of layoffs and fast recovery of operations, and increased their profits during COVID-19 compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. Yet, several barriers remain, the most important ones being high capital costs and longer payback periods. Other barriers include inconsistent inter-provincial trading restrictions, lack of qualified workers and shrinking agricultural land base. Discussion: SFSCs in Atlantic Canadian SFSCs have implemented several sustainable practices in their production and distribution systems. Most of the farm businesses linked to SFSCs are small, are focused on specific product groups, target small towns or rural areas, and rely on direct-on farm sales to individual customers, and thus can play a crucial role by complementing longer food supply chains. By taking SFSCs in Atlantic Provinces as a case, this study expands our understanding of recent efforts and challenges local producers face to adopt sustainable practices in their production and distribution systems. Copyright © 2023 Balcom, Abebe, Yiridoe and Hartt.
ABSTRACT
The rise of circular economic thinking in academic literature can be traced back to Boulding's work on open and closed systems in the 1960s. Since then, the Circular Economy (CE) has been developed as a model to facilitate environmentally sustainable production and consumption, as well as economic and social prosperity. Recent geopolitical destabilising events such as Covid-19, and the war in Ukraine, have further increased the urgency of finding practical solutions to the climate crisis. In this paper we will explore industrial transformation, and how it can best adapt to a more circular and greener landscape from the perspective of economic activity and social prosperity. Training, or retraining of the workforce with the new skills they will need must be targeted and part of a unifying strategy, locally, nationally, and ultimately, globally. We present a conceptual paper on this theme and present initial work carried out to co-design and deliver training to disadvantaged individuals;working with local authorities, community charities and social enterprises and focusing on the grassroots of the drive to promote and establish the system wide changes needed to shift from linear to circular economic practice. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
Considerable research has explored the relationship between intangible assets and firm performance in manufacturing and tertiary industries, but such studies remain scarce for the agri-food industry. In fact, numerous stresses, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have disrupted many activities along agri-food production chains in developing countries, resulting in huge pressure on sustainable agri-food production. Based on a sample of 94 A-share listed agri-food firms in China from 2008 to 2017, this study examines the impact of intangible assets on agri-food enterprises' productivity using generalized method of moments estimation. The results reveal differences between private and state-owned enterprises, indicating that the promotional productivity effect of intangible assets held by private agri-food enterprises was insignificant in the current period, but will be manifested three periods later, in contrast to state-owned enterprises. Due to the soft budget constraints and incentive mechanism of state-owned agri-food enterprises, intangible assets will not promote productivity. In addition, by pursuing the financialization profit model, agri-food enterprises will sacrifice productivity improvement, which can further lead to selective abandonment in the use of intangible assets. Simultaneously, there is a crowding-out effect between intangible and fixed assets in promoting agri-food enterprises' total factor productivity. The findings highlight the importance of the quality and conversion rate of intangible assets, particularly for agri-food enterprises, which are closely related to food security and stability. © 2022 Economic Society of Australia, Queensland
ABSTRACT
Considerable research has explored the relationship between intangible assets and firm performance in manufacturing and tertiary industries, but such studies remain scarce for the agri-food industry. In fact, numerous stresses, including the COVID-19 pandemic, have disrupted many activities along agri-food production chains in developing countries, resulting in huge pressure on sustainable agri-food production. Based on a sample of 94 A-share listed agri-food firms in China from 2008 to 2017, this study examines the impact of intangible assets on agri-food enterprises' productivity using generalized method of moments estimation. The results reveal differences between private and state-owned enterprises, indicating that the promotional productivity effect of intangible assets held by private agri-food enterprises was insignificant in the current period, but will be manifested three periods later, in contrast to state-owned enterprises. Due to the soft budget constraints and incentive mechanism of state-owned agri-food enterprises, intangible assets will not promote productivity. In addition, by pursuing the financialization profit model, agri-food enterprises will sacrifice productivity improvement, which can further lead to selective abandonment in the use of intangible assets. Simultaneously, there is a crowding-out effect between intangible and fixed assets in promoting agri-food enterprises' total factor productivity. The findings highlight the importance of the quality and conversion rate of intangible assets, particularly for agri-food enterprises, which are closely related to food security and stability.
ABSTRACT
In the COVID-19 crisis, many economies suffered from sustainable energy production. The emergence of the COVID-19 crises, extreme volatility in oil prices, limited energy efficiency in energy systems, and weak form of financial stability were the key reasons for it. However, considering these issues, a recent study aims to analyze them. ASEAN countries' energy efficiency and crude oil price volatility are examined as a solution to how financial conditions might be utilized to handle energy efficiency issues and crude oil price volatility. Extending it, the study aims to identify the influence of financial stability on crude oil price volatility and energy efficiency issues. To do this, GMM is used. According to the study's findings, environmental mitigation was determined to be important at 18%, and financial stability and carbon risk significant at 21%. Global warming concerns have been raised due to the ASEAN nations' 19.5% link between financial stability and emissions drift. A country's financial stability is necessary for implementing green economic recovery strategies, among the most widely accepted measures to reduce energy efficiency and guarantee long-term financial potential on the national scale. The study on green economic growth also provides the associated stakeholders with sensible policy consequences on this importance.
ABSTRACT
The Corona pandemic highlights the need for sustainable production systems using automation. Traditional automation is fragile and hard to get right. This method converts one hard problem of producing sustainable production code into three simpler problems: data, patterns and working prototypes. By using agent-based simulation and NanoVC repos for agent arbitration, we create a simulated environment for the approach. Patterns developed by people are used to transform working prototypes into templates where data is fed through to create the robots that create the production code. Having two layers of robots allow early implementation choices to be replaced. Robot of Robots encode a legacy of the person that designed them, thus reducing the fragility of the production code. © 2021 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
In the global manufacturing business, more sustainable solutions are needed, and in parallel manufacturing companies also need a capability to react quickly to unpredictable changes in a highly competitive marketplace. This has become more visible at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic when many companies experienced manufacturing constraints such as a shortage of raw materials as well as a need for transformation of manufacturing facilities to produce vital items. In parallel, many manufacturing companies also are in the transition towards more digitalization as well as automation in their facilities, which can contribute to the capability to manage unpredictable changes, but it might also contribute to challenges. Therefore, the digital transformation of production processes with innovative and emerging technologies, and the contribution and challenges of these technologies are of importance to understand. Specifically, in which way these emerging technologies contribute to a resilient and sustainable production process from a technological perspective, and how these production processes might contribute to achieving sustainability goals. Based on findings from literature an analysis is performed aiming to explore the emerging technologies perspective in relation to capabilities as well as challenges regarding implementing solutions that contributes to a resilient and sustainable production process. The overall findings indicated the importance of having flexible production facilities to be able to respond to customer expectations. However, the digital transformation of production facilities demonstrated other challenges such as energy consumption, lack of skilled personal, low level of standardization, financial sources, and security problems. To conclude, the relationship between the content of resilient and sustainable production systems that are influenced by emerging technologies are suggested, with the ambition to contribute to a more competitive manufacturing company that increase its capability to manage customer expectations. © 2022 The authors and IOS Press.
ABSTRACT
The growing development of biological products highlights the social and environmental responsibility that several industrial companies are facing in recent years. In this context, the advancement of bioprocessing as an alternative for exploring the potential of ecologically based products, especially in biofuels, food, and agro-industrial business, exposes the rational efficiency of the application of renewable sources in different industrial segments. Industries strongly associated with food production concentrate large amounts of wastes rich in bioactive compounds. A range of highly effective technologies has been highly explored to recover large concentrations of prominent compounds present in these materials. The advances in this scenario assurance value addition to these by-products, in addition to highlighting their various technological applications, considering the biorefinery and ecologically based production concepts. Accordingly, this review article described a detailed and systematic approach to the importance of using bioactive compounds and exploring the main sources of these elements. Also, some recent and innovative research that has achieved encouraging results was highlighted. Furthermore, the study included the main extraction technologies that have been investigated as a strategy of prospecting the application of bioactive compounds and optimizing the processes for obtaining natural compounds from plant sources. Finally, future outlooks were presented to contribute to the innovative opportunities and applicability of highly promising technologies and manipulations of bioactive compounds from a range of perspectives.
ABSTRACT
The threats like increasing pollution level and scarcity of natural resources are showing that Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) is one of the key solutions and the main contributor driver of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Eventually, a mysterious disease named as COVID-19 started spreading very fast around the globe and it was declared a pandemic. To protect citizens from this pandemic, the government announced complete lockdown in the country. This lockdown due to COVID-19 has put its impact on every aspect of life. In this research study, the e®orts have been made to identify various impacts of COVID-19 on SCP practices and propose various solutions to overcome these impacts of COVID-19. In the Indian perspective, a total ¯fteen impacts of COVID-19 under ¯ve di®erent heads along with eighteen solutions to overcome these impacts have been identi¯ed with the help of literature, various reports and experts' inputs. All these impacts and solutions were analyzed using a hybrid framework. Results revealed that COVID-19 majorly put its impact on nation, business and behavior followed by the impact on society and environment. All these impacts can be overcome by adopting solutions like strong and clear policies formation and its implementation, ¯nancial packages to industries to boost up the economy, ¯rm determination of top management, safety of the workforce and tax reduction on sustainable products. The ¯nal results will be very helpful for all the actors focused on SCP. °c World Scienti¯c Publishing Company
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to address the global COVID-19 pandemic related to its sustainability, such as environmental, economic and social concerns. The short study also examined how various innovative approaches can help promote sustainable production. Design/methodology/approach: The methodology examines hypothetical scenarios of the current pandemic and tries to describe the quality of evidence to facilitate careful, critical engagement by readers. Secondary data is used to identify sustainability challenges, such as environmental, social and economic viability challenges. The information in this report was gathered from numerous media outlets, research agencies, policy papers, newspapers and other sources to gain a better knowledge of the issue. Findings: As a result, most industry executives and policymakers are looking for appropriate strategies and policies to improve their practices and meet consumer demand. The outcomes explore that the COVID-19 pandemic is a central factor in changes in people’s behavior, reflecting sustainability such as environmental, social and economic responsibility. The COVID-19 outbreak, surprisingly, had a bigger effect on sustainable consumption, accompanied by environmental sustainability, and, to a lesser extent, social and economic viability. Research limitations/implications: Limited secondary evidence and data could not scrutinize the study’s actual problem statements. Hence, it is recommended that the gap in research be fulfilled by conducting a primary survey among various groups of economists, environmentalists and industrialists using the cluster sampling technique by validating the questionnaire of the total sustainable production system. Proposing frameworks for improving the resilience of production and a systematic possible upgraded manufacturing system by using the Industry 4.0 technology during operational processes could advance market demand. Practical implications: The COVID-19 scenario has compelled manufacturing firms to put their production systems on hold for an extended period while they seek long-term solutions to assure simple delivery and cooperation from both business and consumer standpoints. Various aspects of supply and demand are discussed in the referendum, as well as production and consumption challenges during the COVID-19 era. There is a need to restore the production system and find the right source of raw materials. This work focuses on commodity inventory management systems due to mass production, but due to pandemics, it is not in demand and vice versa. The researcher made comprehensible remarks on the use of digitization in the pandemic, which improves social distancing and social well-being and promotes the production system as well. Besides, manufacturing plants should switch to digital manufacturing to reduce the number of workplaces and hence the risk of an outbreak. Therefore, a better supply chain network is needed to supply more manufacturing units. Social implications: There is a bright side of coronavirus that the public health crisis raised worldwide has brought many opportunities for governments and society to make eternal reforms in the public health sector door. During restricted movements for fulfilling market demand, the Industry 4.0 technologies for automation, mechanization and digitalization can help significantly advance a company. This technological advancement and computer digitization for the perspective people may improve the environment, economic and social sustainability also increase social media adoption, which can be crucial for agri-businesses to evaluate customers’ behavior and consumption trends. Originality/value: The paper also instructed to identify critical success factors, barriers and drivers for dealing with the pandemic situation and to develop a strategic policy framework to improve production and process flexibility through the remarkable introduction of digital manufacturing. Before it is too late to stop the spread, producers and consumers must grasp the limits to which suppliers might drive nature. © 2021, Emerald Publishing Limited.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus crisis had a critical impact on supply chains and production worldwide. In particular, closed borders often prevented companies from obtaining the components required for their production. Such disruptions are the results of globalization, with suppliers spreading all over the world. The circular economy is an opportunity to overcome this challenge since components from end-of-life items may substitute supplies from afar. However, many barriers exist in the implementation of circular processes, as manufacturers perceive it as a radical change to their procedures. Therefore, we propose not to use completely new lines for the circular economy, but to use already existing systems. This paper presents the definition of circular integrated production systems (CIPS) and suggests a research roadmap for such to investigate what challenges and potentials arise, and what future research will be needed. © 2021, IFIP International Federation for Information Processing.
ABSTRACT
The overarching call to action represented by the sustainable development goals (SDGs) calls for new sustainable production and management models. Likewise, in periods of crisis, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic, companies are forced to develop competitive and sustainable development strategies to increase their brand value and achieve a good market position. Therefore, this work's main objective is to design a structural equation modelling (SEM) to analyse the main critical dimensions of brand orientation to influence happiness in responsible and sustainable entities. For this purpose, a descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out based on primary data from a survey of a representative sample of 216 managers of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Andalusia (Spain) in the construction, industry and services sectors. The model results reveal significant dimensions of brand orientation and positively direct influence on happiness management. One of the significant managerial implications of this work is that the model allows for more responsible and sustainable management of entities by considering brand orientation about happiness.
ABSTRACT
Even as the pandemic rages on across the globe, the notion of shutting down higher education has never been an option; instead, finding ways to circumvent it has led to a greater reliance on online technology delivery of courses and programs. Although this is not meant as a complete substitute, critics argue that online education has widened the 'diploma disease' crisis. They argued that this would lead to serious long-term problems which may become irreversible. This comparative study was conducted using an 'empirical survey' with 120 students from each group (before and during COVID-19, giving a total of 240 samples/students) to conduct an in-depth study of the academic and job-ready performance of graduates. Findings show that pre-pandemic students did poorly academically compared to during-pandemic counterparts. On the other hand, pre-pandemic graduates achieved better job-readiness scores which included both aptitude and practicum. Moreover, both groups achieved well in terms of academic performance compared to their job-readiness scores. This leads to the question: is it the role of HE to value the concept of sustainable production or to produce certificates/qualifications? Apparently, the HE system has used COVID-19 as an excuse to extend the "diploma disease crisis", a situation that must be addressed by devising a proper policy framework.
ABSTRACT
Despite fears that sub-Sahara Africa would be severely impacted by COVID-19, the implications of the pandemic on sustainable production and consumption have not been studied in detail. Notwithstanding, implications vary depending on country, region, and strictness of coronavirus containment measures. Thus, the impact of COVID-19 on food and nutritional security was expected to be dire in sub-Saharan Africa because of its enormous reliance on global food systems. This article explored the implications of COVID-19 on sustainable production and consumption by focusing on common beans, vegetables, fish, and fruits produced and consumed in rural, peri-urban and urban areas. Two surveys were conducted to collect quantitative data from 619 producers in rural areas and 307 consumers from peri-urban and urban areas of ten Eastern and Southern African countries. Descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) and chi-square test for independence were used to analyse the data. The results show that the pandemic disrupted bean production and consumption across the two sub-regions. However, Southern African farmers and consumers were disproportionately more affected. While farmers in Eastern Africa reported input market challenges, those in Southern Africa identified challenges related to marketing farm produce. We also report that home gardening in urban and peri-urban areas enhanced urban food systems' resilience to the impacts of the pandemic on food security. The study argues that short food supply chains can sustain rural and urban livelihood against adverse effects of the pandemics and contribute towards sustainable production and consumption. Therefore, local input and food distribution models and inclusive institutional and legal support for urban agriculture are crucial drivers for reducing food and nutritional insecurity, poverty, and gender inequality. They are also critical to supporting sustainable production and consumption.
ABSTRACT
Unfortunately, an abrupt corona-virus disease (COVID-19) outbreak brought a drastic change in human lives. Almost every sector of human-beings and their related activities are severely infected and affected by this COVID-19 pandemic. As days are passing, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic is going to be more severe. The fundamental needs for personal protective equipment (PPEs) are rising drastically all over the world. In India, many non-pharmaceutical companies or organizations such as automobile companies are engaged in producing the PPEs at a very marginal rate. Thus this paper proposes a modeling and optimization framework for sustainable production and waste management (SPWM) decision-making model for COVID-19 medical equipment under uncertainty. To quantify the uncertainties among parameter values, we have taken advantage of the intuitionistic fuzzy set theory. A robust ranking function is presented to obtain a crisp version of it. Furthermore, a novel interactive intuitionistic fuzzy programming approach is developed to solve the proposed SPWM model. An ample opportunity to generate the desired solution sets are also depicted. The performance analysis based on multiple criteria such as savings from baseline, co-efficient of variations, and desirability degrees is also introduced. Practical managerial implications are also discussed based on the significant findings after applying to the real case study data-set. Finally, conclusive remarks and the future research direction are also addressed on behalf of the current contributing study.
ABSTRACT
Community pharmacies play a critical societal role and are well placed to enable the progress of national health systems towards sustainability. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of research which has been set up to understand sustainability practices adopted by community pharmacies and evaluate the drivers behind their adoption. This study undertook an exploratory analysis of 95 community pharmacies in Spain, measured their engagement with sustainability practices and assessed these practices in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The results demonstrated the room for improvement in the adoption of green procurement practices in pharmacies and in their engagement with the community. Moreover, the study showcased that, during the COVID-19 crisis, the pharmacies with the largest extent of adoption of sustainability practices implemented preventative measures against the pandemic in a more diverse number during the first weeks of the lockdown, compared to their less sustainable counterparts. This indicates that, to build resilience to future (health) crises, the implementation of sustainable practices in community pharmacies should be encouraged by both policy makers and pharmaceutical firms.