About this Research Topic
Nowadays, stakeholders of agrifood value chains are developing specific strategies, regarding their sustainable transformations, supported by digital technologies. These strategies are designing new activities within and outside the whole value chains and in each of their specific segments, such as raw products, supplies and machinery, production, transformation, transportation and logistics, distribution, retail and consumption. The strategies developed by agrifood stakeholders, related to the digitalization for more sustainability of their practices and activities, are changing the way stakeholders are interacting and fuel, in one way or another, new reconfigurations of value chains. Most often, sustainability initiatives explore new value-added activities, goods, and services, while digital initiatives acknowledge the opportunities resulting from the use of digital solutions, such as sensors, the Internet of Things, e-commerce platforms, blockchain, or robots, and advanced data analytics based on big data, cloud computing technologies or artificial intelligence applications. Digital and sustainable transformations have been explored in the literature, for some time now, by considering either the changes involved in farms, companies, and business activities or the necessary adjustments of the economic and regulatory environments. However, the setting up of strategies related to the digitalization for sustainable agrifood value chains has not often been investigated.
Concerning the strategies of digitalization for sustainable agrifood value chains, stakeholders are contingent to their productive environments, their vision for the future, and the values they share with other stakeholders they are interacting with. Thus, the resulting initiatives and transformations are multiple. Each of them influences the reconfigurations of agrifood value chains in very different ways. All together, they contribute to the design of a diversity of trajectories, focusing on either digital technologies and solutions for more sustainable practices or the development of sustainable activities and practices involving digital tools.
The Research Topic aims to collect a variety of publications exploring different digitalization approaches or models, supporting strategies for more sustainable agrifood value chains of stakeholders, in context, i.e., by considering the specific constraints and opportunities of these strategies in different parts of or throughout the whole agrifood value chains as well as the degree of transformations they imply or the potential positive and negative impacts induced at different scale and space levels.
The expected contributions can cover one, a few, or all the segments of an agrifood value chain or several agrifood value chains.
The themes that are expected, but not limited to, are the following:
• Sustainable strategies implying digital technologies and solutions
• Management issues of sustainable agrifood value chains implied by digitalization
• Contingencies related to the strategies of digitalization for sustainability
• Organizational changes, network impacts and supply chains arrangements
• Digital innovations for traceability and transparency issues
• Links between the strategies of digitalization for sustainability and market dynamics
• Role and impacts of legal and institutional arrangements on these strategies
Concerning the strategies of digitalization for sustainable agrifood value chains, stakeholders are contingent to their productive environments, their vision for the future, and the values they share with other stakeholders they are interacting with. Thus, the resulting initiatives and transformations are multiple. Each of them influences the reconfigurations of agrifood value chains in very different ways. All together, they contribute to the design of a diversity of trajectories, focusing on either digital technologies and solutions for more sustainable practices or the development of sustainable activities and practices involving digital tools.
The Research Topic aims to collect a variety of publications exploring different digitalization approaches or models, supporting strategies for more sustainable agrifood value chains of stakeholders, in context, i.e., by considering the specific constraints and opportunities of these strategies in different parts of or throughout the whole agrifood value chains as well as the degree of transformations they imply or the potential positive and negative impacts induced at different scale and space levels.
The expected contributions can cover one, a few, or all the segments of an agrifood value chain or several agrifood value chains.
The themes that are expected, but not limited to, are the following:
• Sustainable strategies implying digital technologies and solutions
• Management issues of sustainable agrifood value chains implied by digitalization
• Contingencies related to the strategies of digitalization for sustainability
• Organizational changes, network impacts and supply chains arrangements
• Digital innovations for traceability and transparency issues
• Links between the strategies of digitalization for sustainability and market dynamics
• Role and impacts of legal and institutional arrangements on these strategies
Keywords: Digitalization, Sustainability, Agrifood Value Chains, Innovation, Strategies, Contingencies, Short Value Chains, Food Distribution, Food Logistics, Food Processing
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
