Simply demanding sustainability through regulations will not improve the negative impacts of food supply chains. Instead, governments must actively engage in their management and help protect precious ecosystems, says Philipp C. Sauer of NEOMA Business School
Food supply chains are deeply linked to risks of climate change, environmental destruction, inequality, and health crises. Therefore, transitioning to more sustainable, local, and regenerative food systems is key to building a more resilient, fair, and healthy world.
Beef supply chains in Brazil are highly relevant examples for this: according to Amnesty International, approximately 19% of Brazil’s land mass is devoted to beef cattle, with 162 million hectares used for grazing of more than 200 million cows.
Modifying our purchasing habits will not be enough, in itself, to create a more sustainable food system, as change also hinges on reinventing the supply chains and how we think about them. And yet, a study by Ana Alves, Minelle Silva and myself, shows how difficult this task is, because effective collaboration is hindered by different forms of distance among supply chain actors.
In our study, we selected an exemplary case to analyse how supply chains tackle the challenges of sustainable development: the Brazilian Roundtable on Sustainable Livestock (BRSL). Founded in 2009, the BRSL brings together stakeholders in the Brazilian beef industry, including breeders, slaughterhouses, processing companies, distributors, retailers, government representatives, and NGOs. By 2012, prominent members were, for example, the retailers Walmart and Carrefour, the NGO World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Brazil, and banks, Santander and Rabobank Brazil, to name just a few.
Other big players such as McDonald’s had an “observer” status, which underlines the economic power represented in the roundtable. In 2023, BRSL was renamed to Mesa Brasileira da Pecuária Sustentável, the Brazilian Sustainable Livestock Board.
BRSL was set up in response to growing pressure on the sector to become more “sustainable” after boycott movements against Brazilian beef were launched in several countries. We have therefore used it as an example for large-scale beef supply chains and their transition to sustainability to find out how such a transition can work and what we can learn from it for other supply chains.
“According to Amnesty International, approximately 19% of Brazil’s land mass is devoted to beef cattle”
Honest intentions, mixed results
The BRSL has worked on a number of projects to fight corruption, reduce deforestation, prevent meat degradation during transport, and provide decent working conditions for employees. Its members have published a how-to guide since 2014. As a result, the BRSL has been described by NGOs as the most credible Brazilian institution for transitioning to sustainable livestock farming.
Despite the honest intentions, throughout our research, we observed that change in the industry has actually been more limited than expected. Through attending six working meetings and conducting 18 interviews with BRSL stakeholders, we concluded that while food sustainability practices are the focus of discussions and information-sharing, tangible, concrete developments are few. There is more of a transition in the downstream part of the supply chain including slaughterhouses, processing companies, distributors and retailers. However, the joint project tends to marginalise cattle breeders despite their critical role in raising the livestock: this is the most critical part of the supply chain in terms of environmental impact, for example, and without them, it’s impossible to make the industry more sustainable.
Hamstrung by four distance factors
Why is there such a wide gap between the organisation’s goals and its results on the ground? What is the “sticking point” in this institution whose purpose is sustainability? We think this can be summed up in a few words: there’s too much distance between the actors in the supply chain.
Our study identifies four distance-related aspects. First, there is the geography: Brazil covers 8.5 million km2 (15 times the size of France), with a distance of 4,400 km between its northernmost and southernmost borders. BRSL members, as well as the supply chain partners, are scattered across this vast territory, which makes communication and the creation of direct and trustful relationships difficult, especially for the smaller members of the supply chain.
The second factor is the diverse nature of the organisations: a small-scale breeder from the rural areas of Brazil has almost nothing in common with a multinational meat company that exports to the four corners of the world. However, being part of the same supply chain means that the different needs and processes across the small and large-scale partners need to be coupled to allow for efficiency and avoid the deterioration of the precious beef products.
This gives rise to the third disparity, and this time it is cultural. The actors in the supply chain are so diverse in terms of their origins, heritages, education and the environment that shaped them that they do not share the same values, the same culture and the same understanding of what is meant by food sustainability. What’s more, small breeders often live and work in rural areas and do not grasp some of the terms used in the how-to guide produced by the collective efforts.
Lastly, neither the BRSL nor the beef supply chain in general are a homogeneous, close-knit entity. Some of the stakeholders have intense, regular contact, whereas others remain on the fringes or are entirely passive. They don’t play an active role in the management of the organisation or its decision-making, and even end up becoming invisible to the other stakeholders.
“A small-scale breeder from the rural areas of Brazil has almost nothing in common with a multinational meat company”
A lack of information, a lack of trust
These four difficulties combined generate three effects that undermine collective efforts to transform the sector.
The first effect is a lack of cohesion in the supply chain, including among members who otherwise work together on a daily basis. In spite of their buyer-supplier relationship, we have found that breeders and slaughterhouses don’t know each other well. Small breeders do not attend BRSL meetings: instead, they are represented by large breeders – who are very different from them – or by their unions. One of the participants in the study even questioned the relevance of the word “chain” when discussing the “supply chain”, since the connection between some partners is not close or strong enough.
The second effect, which stems from the first, is a lack of information, which circulates asymmetrically in the supply chain depending on the quality of the relationship between actors. Some supply chain members do not receive any information on making their supply chain more sustainable at all. And yet, the transition towards food sustainability needs the active, widespread and trustful sharing of knowledge and good practices together with a deep understanding of the context and challenges. This is the prerequisite for on-the-ground change, but it is often lacking.
Last but not least, we observed a lack of trust among the different actors, especially between breeders and slaughterhouses. Their relationship revolves primarily around tough price negotiations. Many breeders think that the priority is to stand together against these “enemies”, and not to upgrade the way they operate. This lack of trust can also interfere with communication between the most active players in the sector and others: even if they share their insights into food sustainability with everyone, there’s a good chance they won’t be believed.
Governments can intervene in supply chains
The existence of well-organised, dedicated supply chains does not necessarily guarantee the emergence of a virtuous food system. The stakeholders need to carry out a detailed analysis to identify the symptoms of this disconnect, and then find a solution. In particular, tackling the distrust between the various actors calls for sustained efforts, backed up by government agencies and NGOs, where necessary.
Ultimately, we urge governments to actively engage in the management of supply chains: simply demanding more sustainability through regulations will not work. In the beef supply chain, for which BRSL is only one example of many, they could enforce and/or enable better representation of breeders and ensure that information reaches them. They could also set up mediation bodies to foster more constructive dialogue with slaughterhouses.
About the author
Philipp is an Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management and Purchasing at NEOMA Business School.
Find out more
This article is part of wider research: Uncovering effects of supply chain distance on sustainability adoption: empirical evidence from a multi-stakeholder partnership by Ana P. Ferreira Alves, Minelle E. Silva and Philipp C. Sauer, Supply Chain Management, November 2024.