Insight tools to improve food supply chain efficiency and sustainability

Future food chains

The increasing demand for improving sustainability and the current and future shortages of energy and water require changes in the food system, both within the chain and within processing activities. These challenges require actions by all stakeholders in the food chain. Given the interconnectedness of the diverse sustainability dimensions, these changes ask for qualitative and quantitative insights to develop impactful strategies. Sustainable food chains and processing requires insight into 1) alternative chain and process design, 2) costs of investment and operation, 3) effects on product quality, 4) effects on capacity, 5) footprint of alternatives.

Assessing sustainability

Wageningen Food & Biobased Research provides tailored, expert support to create insight in relevant hotspots and causes related to activities within food chain and processing to aid in developing the most impactful strategy for your company. Tools developed and tested in previous project are now made available to provide rapid results to partners interested in enhancing sustainability. Our tools employ a food systems approach and contain the latest developments in chain and food processing knowledge. With underlying data from relying secondary data sources, that can be supplemented with your primary data, various indicators can be analysed in an efficient way.

ACE calculator analyses chains

The AgroChain greenhouse gas Emissions (ACE) calculator provides insights in the effects of interventions aiming for improved sustainability in the food production and distribution chain. The tool aids in quantification of the sustainability impacts of a current situation and alternative situations from a wide range of interventions. Possible interventions include alternative ingredient and sourcing, energy sources, packing, transport modality, processing and end-of-life options. In the project Verhogen duurzaamheid voedselverwerking in de keten, the ACE calculator was used to analyse diverse perceived sustainable food systems, validating or debunking the perception.

Procestimator for processing impact

The expert tool Procestimator determines the production costs for a food process design while keeping track of food quality aspects and material composition. The details on processing steps level provide insight into hotspots in costs and in impact, and in the most determining factors influencing these. The Procestimator facilitates easy comparison of alternative processing designs and provides guidelines for targeted experimental development. In the European project Food Processing in a box it was used to design processing pathways for side streams to produce food ingredients, while taking into account current use of the material and newly appearing side streams.