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Sustainability standards in global agrifood supply chains

Nature Food volume 2, pages 758–765 (2021)Cite this article

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Abstract

Agrifood supply chains contribute to many environmental and social problems. Sustainability standards—rules that supply chain actors may follow to demonstrate their commitment to social equity and/or environmental protection—aim to mitigate such problems. We provide a narrative review of the effects of many distinct sustainability standards on different supply chain actors spanning multiple crops. Furthermore, we discuss five emerging questions—causality, exclusion, compliance and monitoring, excess supply and emerging country markets—and identify directions for future research. We find that, while sustainability standards can help improve the sustainability of production processes in certain situations, they are insufficient to ensure food system sustainability at scale, nor do they advance equity objectives in agrifood supply chains.

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Fig. 1: Proliferation of sustainability standards.

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG; ME 5179/1-1) and German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL; 2219NR144).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Eva-Marie Meemken

  2. CH Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

    Christopher B. Barrett

  3. Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA

    Hope C. Michelson

  4. Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Goettingen, Goettingen, Germany

    Matin Qaim

  5. Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

    Thomas Reardon

  6. Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany

    Jorge Sellare

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E.-M.M., C.B.B., H.C.M., M.Q., T.R. and J.S. developed the research idea. E.-M.M. drafted the paper. All other authors commented on and contributed to writing the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Eva-Marie Meemken.

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Meemken, EM., Barrett, C.B., Michelson, H.C. et al. Sustainability standards in global agrifood supply chains. Nat Food 2, 758–765 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00360-3

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