EC-Asia Research Network on Integration of Global and Local Agri-Food Supply Chains Towards Sustainable Food Security

The proposed research will bring together researchers from a number of disciplines to address a global challenge in achieving sustainability and resilience of agri-food supply chains. The research targets solutions to the challenge related to a food security strategy debate on global sourcing and self-sufficiency. With increasing concerns about climate change and environmental impact and associated risks, further complexity has been brought into this argument on the supply and sourcing strategy issues and a number of key questions need to be answered urgently. From the business perspective, whether promoting the practice of local agri-food systems indicates efficient and sustainable resource use? From the geographical supply market perspective, whether diversified sourcing and international trade have promoted sustainable and resilient agri-food supply?

These arguments should not merely lead to options of the geographical focus of agri-food production and sourcing strategies. Instead, the solutions require in-depth understanding of interactions and trade-offs amongst different locally characterised options and should lead to place based ecologically harmonious local agri-food systems demonstrating the sustainability value and contributing global agri-food supply chains. For this purpose, this project aims to identify place based policy and solution framework to support local ecological system and sustain agri-food production, meet bioenergy needs and reduce waste, while best interface food and non-food input and output to global markets.

Effective approaches will be developed to leverage the benefits in the context of Multi-level (geographical scale), Multi-dimension performance measurement (sustainable and resilient agri-food supply) of agri-food supply chains (MMAFS). The multidisciplinary group ranging from economics, management, science and engineering have been set up to form a strong platform for research and knowledge exchange to carry out this research.