Food Mileage: An Indicator of Evolution of Agricultural Outsourcing

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to report the finding from study on distance traveled by fresh vegetables from farming location to consumer in traditional and organized retailing. The focus is on the five fresh vegetables and final consumer destination is the city of Chennai. Research methodology: The research is primarily exploratory in nature and research instruments include interviews and survey through questionnaire with players in the fresh vegetable supply chain viz agents, auctioneers, wholesalers, traditional retailers, organized retailers and customers. Additional data collected thorough secondary source, existing literature on Indian retail. Findings: ‘Food miles’ is relatively recent concept in the fresh vegetable retailing. Entry of organized retail to India and its exponential growth, specifically in fresh vegetable marketing, has impacted the whole spectrum of supply chain practices. Shorter food miles is an indicator of near sourcing and longer food miles of fresh vegetables is an indicator for agricultural outsource. The result of this study reveals that significant increase in food miles in case of organized retailers. The capitalization of emerging opportunity by the agribusiness is shift towards outsourcing of agriculture. Research limitations: Being an early work in the area of food mileage of fresh vegetables in Indian context, there is no reference data available related to food mileage. Speed at which fresh vegetable reaching its destination has not been studied as time taken between any two points was not observed. This is the limitation of this study and also scope for further future research. The research study is not finding factors related to the food mileage.