Canned tomatoes: a comparative analysis of italian regional and national supply chains

Globalization has brought to an exponential increase of food transportation. A first cause of such a growth is the evolution of consumption practices, characterised by increasing demands for highly processed and packed products, and for exotic or out of season products. Another reason is the evolution of supply patterns, with the advent of global firms and modern retailers Since the mid-1990’s several studies have extended the research on the environmental impact of agribusiness to the specific issue of “food miles”, i.e. the distance covered by food products (Safe Alliance, 1994). Quantitative research confirms the relevant impact of food transportation on global warming but also points out that there is no direct connection between short supply chains and sustainability. In fact, because of trade-offs involved in supply chains organization, longer supply chains can result, in some contexts, less polluting than shorter ones. A first trade-off discussed in literature (Jones, 2001) opposes the impact of transport to the one of production. The second significant trade-off involves the efficiency of logistics (AEA Technology, 2005). First, modal choice must be considered. In fact long distance supply chains can have a minor impact than shorter ones, if the last ones are based on vehicles with high impacts per ton-km. Secondly, the load factor must be considered. The higher the load factor, the lower the environmental impact per unit of good transported. The actual strategy of stock minimization can be associated to low load factors, except if the carrier can organize multi-pick and multi-drop trips, return journeys, etc. Big manufacturers and modern distribution (MD) succeed in conciliating justin-time and high load factors thanks to their scale economies and an organization centered on few regional range distribution centers (DCs), where goods are grouped and then sorted. This higher logistic efficiency per tonkm is usually the corollary of a transport intensive system, though. Probably the more relevant result of all these studies is the placespecific and market-specific nature of environmental impacts of food supply chains. This is why the analysis of new contexts and products is needed. Here we consider the Italian market, that until today has been seldom analysed, and we choose a processed product while food miles research has until now been almost oriented toward fresh products.