Food Supply Chain: A Review of Approaches Which Enhance Sustainability with a Focus on Social Responsibility

The sustainability of food supply chain management in a global market after the Economic Crisis is increasingly relevant; the economic and environmental pillars have been closely studied and examined, while the social pillar is considered only marginally and never independently. We propose a literature review focused on 28 articles regarding sustainability in the food supply chain. The proposed review (a) detects methods that could be used to enhance sustainability, (b) highlights the most used methods and their shortcomings, and with regard to social sustainability (c) highlights the fact that most of the studies were found to be based on empirical approach. Moreover, we propose the use of a fuzzy framework to evaluate sustainability (in particular, the social aspect), since fuzzy variables could better explain phenomena and situations generally described verbally.