Sustainable Supply Chain Management practices in the Food Industry.

The food industry is central to human beings and heavily impacts the lives of the entire society. Nowadays, the sustainable development goal and the introduction of new information and communication technologies have led food companies to deal with sustainability requirements. They require the implementation of sustainable practices that have the dual objective of improving the overall performance of the company itself and fulfilling the sustainable development goals. Research works on sustainable supply chain management practices in the food industry are quite fragmented, as they often consider just a part of the chain. Therefore, through a systematic literature review, the aim of this project is twofold: first, to provide an up-to-date analysis of supply chain management practices within the scope of sustainability, studying the findings of 224 reviewed papers. Second, to discuss the integration of sustainable practices into supply chain management in the food industry through an empirical analysis. In addition, the importance attributed to the three sustainability dimensions and their relationship with the implementation of sustainable practice is proposed. By exploiting the established and rigorous systematic literature review methodology and a survey questionnaire, this work represents a contribution that includes the point of view of professionals that, in their daily professional life, they are increasingly dealing with the sustainability issue. The implications of this work are relevant for academic research as they enlarge the body of knowledge and highlight key points where there is the need to investigate further. From a practical point of view, this study proposes an overview of the most common and adopted practices that can be implemented in order to achieve sustainable development and the degree of implementation of these practices and their impacts in Italian or French companies operating in the food industry.