Food Supply Chain Emissions
The importance of food supply chain emissions has increased. According to a study, entitled Food Systems Are Responsible for a Third of Global Anthropogenic GHG Emissions, recently published in Nature Food by Monica Crippa et al. (2021), our food systems emit 34% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions every year. It turns out that “[t]he largest contribution came from agriculture and land use/land-use change activities (71%), with the remaining were from supply chain activities: retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging”. What is remarkable about this study is the level of detail and size of the dataset, called EDGAR-FOOD, which identifies the sources of greenhouse gas emissions across the entire food production and supply chain. One of the coauthors argues that “[a]ny policy decision requires a good and robust evidence base”, hoping that “EDGAR-FOOD will be helpful in identifying where action to reduce food system greenhouse gas emissions is most effective”.
Crippa, M., Solazzo, E., Guizzardi, D., Monforti-Ferrario, F., Tubiello, F. N., & Leip, A. (2021). Food Systems Are Responsible for a Third of Global Anthropogenic GHG Emissions. Nature Food, 2, 198–209. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00225-9
Critical Engaged SCM Research
The Journal of Supply Chain Management is doing an excellent job of stretching the boundaries of our discipline. I know from various conversations with colleagues that I am not the only fan of the journal. I would like to give an example of a very powerful recent JSCM paper: Touboulic, McCarthy, & Matthews (2020). It is entitled Re-Imagining Supply Chain Challenges Through Critical Engaged Research. The authors explore “how engaged research can support the development of the theory and practice of supply chain management (SCM) and present critical engaged research as an extended form of engaged research”. Check out the following video from the authors explaining their vision of critical engaged SCM research.
Research Quality vs. Research Quantity
I recently read on LinkedIn how a department head bragged about how many papers his team published in highly ranked journals over the past year. This mentality has to stop because it does not lead to more, but to less quality. In fact, quantity competes with quality. Often “motivated” by the disincentive systems of their universities, many academics waste their time writing lots of papers that no one ever will cite. They should rather invest this time in writing one great paper. This can take years, but is worth doing. For example, Mark Granovetter is a highly acclaimed academic who some consider worthy of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Google Scholar counts almost 150,000 citations of his work. Yet, 70% and 84% of these citations refer to just 2 and 5 of his great papers, respectively. So if you ever sit on an assessment committee or make bonus decisions, do not just count the number of publications in certain journals per year. You might then overlook academic leaders like Granovetter.
