Toward Agenda 2030: Sustainability Assessment Tools for Evaluation and Improvement of Food System Supply Chain

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue focuses on the evaluation and improvement of Food System Supply Chain through the use of sustainability /environmental assessment tools.

Food is a key issue among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) indicated in the Agenda 2030. In particular, one of them (SDG 2) directly targets food while others are strongly connected to this topic. In this context sustainable food systems could not only help in “ending hunger” but also by helping the world to achieve critical progress on all 17 SDGs. The European Union (EU) has a strong leadership role, globally and regionally, in the area of Sustainable Development (SD) highlighting the need of transition from a linear economy to circular economy based on the logic of the 3Rs, “reduce, reuse and recycle”. These policies are integrated with several initiatives in the field of nutrition and food safety research and innovation, such as FOOD 2030, an innovation policy for transforming food systems in consistency with the European Green Deal and the Farm-to-Fork and Bio-economy strategies.

Food production is significantly responsible for resource consumption and has remarkable impacts that need to be properly evaluated not only from an environmental point of view but also from a wider perspective of sustainability. In particular, sustainability assessment in the food system supply chain involves evaluation of environmental, social and economic dimensions: this entails evaluating many aspects and having multiple objectives at the same time.

To address these and other challenges, this Special Issue aims to encourage academics, public bodies, and entrepreneurs to submit contributions for disseminating their research and for providing solutions in an optic of a more sustainable food system supply chain.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Sustainable consumption;
• Circular economy at a supply chain level;
• Urban sustainability;
• Environmental Assessment tools (e.g., Life Cycle Assessment; Life Cycle Costing; Material Flow Analysis);
• Environmental sustainability;
• Sustainable Food system supply chain.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Agata Lo Giudice
Dr. Maria Rosaria Sessa
Prof. Dr. Charles Mbohwa
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• food system supply chain
• food waste
• traceability
• sustainability assessment tools
• food–energy–water nexus
• circular economy
• Agenda 2030
• European Green Deal
• Food 2030