Emerald & EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards

The 2022 winner of the Emerald & EFMD outstanding doctoral research awards is Vanessa Sofia Melo Magalhães, who won for her work on food waste along fresh food supply chains which provides a research framework to guide mitigation strategies.

Dissertation title: Framework development for the prevention of food loss and waste: An analysis along the fresh food supply chain
Institution: University of Coimbra, Portugal
PhD obtained at: University of Coimbra

Food security, especially food loss along supply chains, is receiving increasing attention globally.

With many countries struggling to feed their growing populations, United Nations (UN) member states have acknowledged the urgency of the issue by pledging to reduce global food loss and waste generated along food supply chains by 2030, as part of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Although research on sustainable consumption and food production has made significant progress, there are lingering uncertainties over the causes and best mitigation strategies for food loss in supply chains from production until consumption.

"The complexity of food loss and waste requires in-depth analyses from a holistic perspective to understand its causes better and to identify the most promising mitigation strategies, which need to be improved in the literature," explains Dr. Vanessa Sofia Melo Magalhães, the recipient of the Emerald and HETL Outstanding Doctoral Research Award for 2022.

In her doctoral thesis, Dr. Magalhães puts forth a methodology to identify the causes of food loss and optimise mitigation strategies to reduce it along fresh food supply chains. "My PhD thesis goes beyond identifying the causes of food loss and waste and proposing strategies to mitigate them," says Dr. Magalhães. Indeed, her thesis adopts a more holistic, multidimensional approach to achieving mitigation goals through careful analyses of the interplay between supply chain disruptions and mitigation strategies. This approach to food loss mitigation considers the economic, environmental, and social implications of each strategy.

Two case studies, one on the Brazilian beef supply chain and the other on the Portuguese fruit and vegetable supply chain, form an essential part of the thesis. Dr. Magalhães determined the leading causes of food loss and waste in the two cases by employing her newly developed methodology. "I concluded that the root causes of food loss and waste in the two supply chains studied were mainly related to logistics,"

she states. Apart from logistics-related issues, the root causes also included those related to demand and the product itself in the Brazilian beef supply chain.

"The thesis also highlights the role of information management in the Portuguese fruit and vegetable supply chain, especially with respect to improving the information flow and ensuring that the decision-making process is supported by sufficient and real-time information," Dr. Magalhães explains.

Cost-benefit analyses form a core aspect of food loss mitigation strategies. Dr. Magalhães's methodology will allow practitioners, managers, and policymakers to evaluate mitigation strategies using a step-by-step framework and help them select the best evaluation criteria corresponding to the main objective of mitigation efforts and business circumstances. Moreover, the thesis provides a framework for future research to identify optimal mitigation strategies under each criterion.

Dr. Magalhães concludes, "Identifying the causes that play a prominent role in generating food loss and waste can help practitioners and policymakers design policies that facilitate the mitigation and prevention of food loss and waste effectively while prioritising cost-effective efforts with higher environmental and social gains."

To mitigate problems related to food loss and ensure a sufficient supply of nutritious food for the global population, world leaders will need to adopt a modern approach to food security. In this regard, Dr. Magalhães' framework, with a focus on the fresh food supply chain, can greatly support mitigation efforts.