A lesson for Africa

An international research project has been launched to improve the food supply chain in order to meet the rising global demand for food and protect the environment.

The three year programme – Step Change in Agri-Food Logistics Eco-Systems (SCALE) sets out to address spiralling global food demand, increasing energy prices and the need to reduce environmentally damaging emissions.

Cranfield School of Management is the lead partner in the project, and Dr Denyse Julien, senior lecturer in the supply chain research centre at Cranfield School of Management, said: “Project SCALE has the ambitious goal of both increasing economic competitiveness in the food and drink supply chain, improving environmental sustainability and also improving the wellbeing of those working in the sector.”

“Working with organisations across Europe, we will develop an innovative approach to measuring food supply chain’s performance, a collaborative framework to drive the right behaviours and an ICT platform to enable the transformation.”

The project will deliver a set of tools enable the food sector to change to operational practices to improve efficiency, visibility and sustainability of food logistics.

The outputs will be piloted across a range of food networks in north-west Europe, to demonstrate how the new approaches can deliver the improvements needed whilst still meeting both consumer expectations and the targets set by government.

Dr Julien is leading the project with Dr Carlos Mena, also from Cranfield. It is funded by the INTERREG IVB North-West Europe, a financial instrument of the European Union’s Cohesion Policy. It funds projects which support transnational cooperation.

The five partners for Project SCALE are Cranfield School of Management, European Food and Farming Partnerships (EFFP), DHL, Wageningen University and the Université d’Artois.

Perhaps Africa should embark on a similar project, especially across East and Southern Africa!?