A Systematic Review of Sustainable Supply Chain Management Practices in Food Industry

The food industry is central to human beings and heavily impacts the lives of the entire society. Nowadays, the sustainable development goal and the introduction of new information and communication technologies has led food companies to deal with this new paradigm. They require sustainable practices that have the dual objective of improving the overall performance of the company itself and fulfilling the sustainability requirement. Research works on sustainable supply chain management practices in the food industry is quite fragmented, as it often considers just a part of the chain. Therefore, through a systematic literature review, this paper aims to provide an up-to-date analysis of supply chain management practices within the scope of sustainability, studying the findings of 224 reviewed papers. The implications of this work are relevant for academic research as they enlarge the body of knowledge and highlight key points where there is the need to investigate further. From a practical point of view this study proposes an overview of the most common and adopted practices that can be implemented in order to achieve sustainable development in the food industry.