Information Services for Agri-Food Supply Chains - A Framework for Development

Several global developments such as the growing demand for bioenergy, limits in the availability of water and diminishing production resources as well as sector-wide crises (e.g. BSE, swine fever, dioxin) have led to a changing attitude of society towards the consequences of the food system‘s activities for social, economic and environmental issues, captured in the term of sustainability. As a consequence, consumers show increasing interest in the characteristics of food, and in turn, on the availability of related information and guarantees. Enterprises in agri-food supply chains are facing new expectations and are seeking to communicate social, economic and environmental performance of their business to customers within the supply chain and consumers as the final customers. Information services, since they are mainly building on existing systems, could provide flexible solutions for enterprises to measure and evaluate sustainability of products throughout a food supply chain. Gained information on product characteristics might be used for decision support within enterprises as well as for communication of sustainable practices to customers and consumers, resulting in increased competitiveness of enterprises, supply chains and the sector by satisfying customers’ and consumers’ need for information on the sustainability of a product. This paper will introduce a framework for developing information services for agri-food supply chains by identifying and defining different types of information models and gaps, which need to be considered when developing an information service.