Enhancing value creation in short food supply chains through digital platforms

Abstract The digital transition toward sustainable food systems is a key challenge, boosted by recent policy initiatives to build up digitalized and sustainable business models at farm and territorial levels, which may address new opportunities for alternative food systems. The paper presents the results of an anticipation exercise whose purpose is to identify the value-generating potential of digital platforms for short food supply chains and compatibility issues. The starting point was a theoretical distinction of value into primary and secondary values, where the first is absorbed by supply chain actors, and the second goes beyond supply chain boundaries in the form of social, environmental, ethical, and cultural benefits. In the empirical analysis of the study, the awareness–knowledge–adoption–product sequence was instrumental in investigating the potential adoption of the two different digital solutions and assessing their effectiveness in terms of expected benefits. For the analysis, data were drawn from a sample of farmers who distribute their products through short food supply chains in Italy. Results reveal that digital innovations represent socio-technical phenomena whose value-generating capacity is socially context-dependent and that, beyond their function as marketplaces or information-storing devices, these platforms can help pursue sustainability-related goals.