Digitalization of agri-food supply chains: towards better social sustainability?
with Marco Formentini, Gustavo Savino and Simone Agostinelli
In the last years, agri-food supply chains represented one of the most relevant contexts for the “digital transformation” phenomenon, through the adoption of novel technologies such as blockchain and precision agriculture.
Indeed, by implementing new digital technologies in agri-food supply chains, an improvement in terms of resource efficiency has been achieved, first of all by reducing waste, having a better visibility on the supply chain and more integrated communication with the other parties.
The main focus (both in practice and at academic level) is on technical aspects related to the implementation of these technologies and the potential benefits of using them (e.g., efficiency; quality and yield improvement; transparency; traceability). However, there is a lack of understanding of the efforts that the adoption requires vis a vis the benefits and how these efforts and benefits are shared across the various actors involved in agri-food supply chains.
In this session Marco Formentini will present the potential role played by digital technologies to enable and support this fair and equitable sharing of value along the agri-food supply chain, a theme so far overlooked.
In this context, Gustavo Savino and Simone Agostinelli will provide concrete examples from Barilla’s experience, such as supply chain contracts including the adoption of digital tools to support decision making (granoduro.net DSS), which contributed to improvement of sustainability throughout the durum wheat supply chain.
Speakers
Dr. Marco Formentini is an Associate Professor in Management Engineering at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science, University of Trento. He received his PhD from University of Padova (Italy) and he has been previously Research Fellow at Cass Business School, London (UK), Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at University of Bath, School of Management, Bath (UK) and Associate Professor at Audencia Business School, Nantes (France).
His research involves activities in the areas of Operations and Supply Chain Management, focusing mainly on sustainability and supply chain collaboration with a specific interest on agri-food supply chains.
Gustavo Savino is Durum Wheat and Semolina Purchasing Senior Manager in Greece and in non-EU countries for the Barilla group. Graduated in Naples in Mechanical Engineering, he has worked in Barilla since 1997. Over the years he has held various positions in the Supply Chain, from Logistics to the purchase of raw materials.
Simone Agostinelli is EU Durum Wheat Purchasing Manager and Group Sustainable Farming Project Manager for the Barilla group. After graduating in Agriculture at the Marche Polytechnic, he gained experience in various roles within the cereal supply chain, including agronomic and quality manager of a mill and production manager of a seed company before moving to Barilla, of which he coordinates the project Barilla Sustainable Farming.