The overall objective of the VALUMICS project is to provide decision makers throughout food value chains with a comprehensive suite of approaches and tools that will enable them to evaluate the impact of strategic and operational policies, and enhance the resilience, integrity and sustainability of food value chains for European countries. The consortium driving this proposal has a core of 19 European partners from 14 countries, and two Asian partners.
Given the complexity and diversity of food value chains, and the contexts within which they operate, the VALUMICS project offers a comprehensive and multi-dimensional scope that will go beyond the current state of art to provide new approaches and tools for stakeholders on several fronts. This includes new modelling approaches, consumer research, foresight analysis and synthesis into policy options, adding new perspectives for policy makers, both in government and within the food industry sector.
The dynamics within the food systems will be modelled using a causal loop analysis framework, covering the interconnected value, supply, and decision chains. The causality dynamics framework for the VALUMICS project methodological approach will be implemented as a key driver of the project work through workshops involving stakeholders. The causal loop framework will be built with involvement of all participants in the project in order to construct a shared vision of the overall system.
VALUMICS will challenge and go beyond previous research limitations and boundaries through a highly cross-functional project design that will provide a bridging analysis across the economic, environmental and social dimensions previously kept separate.
This whole chain analysis perspective will deliver comparative assessments at the European level and beyond. The case studies will cover short supply chains, with local and national analysis, as well as reaching global food chains relevant for sustainable food and nutrition security in Europe.
In the first reporting period the conceptual framework for the modelling work was driven by a system thinking approach in dedicated workshops to understand the dynamics of FVCs. The key actors and flow charts of the selected FVCs were identified and a generic system dynamics (SD) conceptual model of supply-, value- and decision chains for profit driven systems was suggested. Furthermore, an evidence base and characterisation framework on policies, regulations and governance impacting upon FVCs was established and availability of secondary data for the project´s analysis and model validation was explored.
In the second period the interconnected analysis through case studies applied the characterisation framework of policy and governance interventions as a basis to understand how the power structure in FVCs has been evolving due to consolidation at all levels. Analysis of governance of FVC case studies and linking the results to the outcome of economic analysis provided a structured approach for the case study work to identify the system drivers and potential occurrences of unfair trading practices. Included were empirical studies on food chain organisation, price formation and price transmission, persistence of supply chain relations, assessment of economies of scale and technical innovations, and statistical analysis of agribusiness profitability. Furthermore, environmental hot spots in FVCs were identified, modelling of transportation and production, and insights to consumer behaviour and food consumption were gained. Overall, the research contributed to a more holistic understanding of the FVCs' dynamics including problematic behaviour related to power asymmetries, bargaining power and fair value distribution, and thus provided evidence to underpin high-level requirements for the simulation model. The project consortium decided to prioritise work on “fairness”, where the modelling objective was to identify unfair trading practices from the farmers’ perspective, but also considering all actors in the chain including consumers.
In the third and final period of the VALUMICs project the research on consumer behaviour and modelling linked to future scenarios and transition pathways, focused on the urgent need for transforming food systems and ensuring more sustainable production and consumption. The work was further substantiated through stakeholder engagement to develop transition pathways and sustainable consumption scenarios and recommendations. The VALUMICS integrated model was further conceptualised as a generic hybrid of SD and agent-based model (ABM) and was formulated, tested, and implemented as a scenario simulator for the wheat to bread chain, to be further adapted for the tomato and salmon value chains.