Supply Chain Management and Sustainability in Agri-Food System: Italian Evidence

Supply chain has a crucial meaning for contemporary agriculture. Its development is necessary for satisfaction consumer’s and farmer’s demands. In other words, supply chain or value chain—is an important mechanism, which enables food security and rural development. In general words, supply chain is a multifaceted process, which is influenced by external and internal social and economic factors as well as global challenges. Management of agri-food supply chain is very distinctive due to food perish ability and requirements of food safety. For understanding, assessment and managing the supply chain processes in agriculture is necessary to consider its main mechanisms and contemporary situation. This paper describes conceptual framework of the contemporary agricultural supply chain processes; examines different influencing factors; considers issues of the supply chain sustainability according Triple Bottom Line concept. Great attention in the article payed to logistics as the most important part of supply chain. Logistic processes directly related to the three pillars of sustainability. Therefore sustainable logistics has economic, social and environmental impact on the rural area. Besides theoretical issues, the paper aims to estimate contemporary agri-food supply chain in Italy. The analysis of Italian evidence based on the different indicators, directly and indirectly described the agricultural value chain (data of ISMEA, INEA, ISTAT, Eurostat and World Bank).