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Top1. Introduction
Food system industrialisation had become prominent in the mid-to-late 1940s where much focus was placed on efficiency and economic rationalisation (Spaargaren et al., 2013). Since the 1980s, significant change is observed towards globalised food systems, responding to an ability to create competitive advantage through product diversity, economies of scale, and resource availability (Fonte, 2010). Increasing challenges faced by global food systems are driving sustainability-oriented consumers to look towards alternatives. Arising from this trend is the re-localisation of food systems. Food system re-localisation seeks to support sustainable food supply chains by offering substitutes to globalised food systems (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018; Nsamzinshuti et al., 2018; Rocha & Lessa, 2009). Examples of food system re-localisation include short food supply chains (SFSC), city-region food systems (CRFS), local food systems, and regional food supply chains (Blay-Palmer et al., 2018; Jarzębowski et al., 2020; Kitsios et al., 2018; Renting et al., 2003). In addition to perceived sustainability benefits, Cappelli and Cini (2020) suggest that COVID19 may push the re-localisation of food further as international trade restrictions are not present. This paper is on short food supply chains.
The short food supply chain is a supply chain with reduced actors between the producer and the end customer, resulting in improved personalised trust and enhanced relations (Kneafsey et al., 2013). SFSCs offer direct relationships between producers and consumers, resulting in attractive benefits including sustainability, loyalty, trust, improved food quality, and food safety (Del Giudice et al., 2016). In SFSCs, the control over economic, social, and environmental factors is important, thus, sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices are sought for (Brandenburg et al., 2014). There is a need for consumers to make a valued decision when buying food, which can be supported in shorter, more local food supply chains. Challenges facing SFSCs include demonstrating the locality of food due to issues with traceability, and the governance of products (Kalfagianni & Skordili, 2018). Aggregation of producers and products, in addition to appropriate information flow, are needed to overcome the challenges and create successful SFSCs (McLaughlin & Shermain, 2014). Supply chain information flow contributes to transparency, integrity, traceability, and performance (Minnens et al., 2019; Singh, 2014; Zhu et al., 2018). In addition, real-time, consistent, asymmetrical, and reliable information flow is increasingly pursued in food supply chains. Information flow and information sharing improves business and supply chain processes, enhances responsiveness and visibility, and improves flexibility (Fawcett et al., 2011). Addressing the challenges through information system perspectives whilst seeking to also build trust within supply chains would require the adoption of an appropriate digital platform. Digital platforms are used to improve sustainable food supply chain management, through improved resource management, reduced food waste, traceability, and virtualisation (Annosi et al., 2021; El Bilali & Allahyari, 2018; Lezoche et al., 2020; Panetto et al., 2020). Digital platforms can offer benefits for SFSC, which include automating actions to replace manual processes, improve traceability, governance, integrate provenance data, and address other informational flow challenges associated with SFSCs (Burgess et al., 2021).