Assessing Regional Farm-to-Institution Food Distribution Systems: An Agent-Based Approach

The long-term sustainability and resilience of the industrial food supply system is threatened by its extremely high rate of resource consumption and its lack of structural complexity. Seeking a safer, healthier, and more sustainable alternative, farmers and consumers are increasingly participating in localized food systems. Scaling up the capacity of localized food supply chains (FSCs) to meet growing consumer demand will require the development of new types of marketing and distribution channels. The farm-to-institution channel, in which farmers sell their products directly to institutional and retail customers, is of particular interest. This paper describes an agent-based approach to modeling and analyzing FSCs, with an aim of investigating the impact of farm-to-institution distribution on emergent FSC structure and sustainability outcomes