Gower Sustainable Food Chains Series: Gower Sustainable Food Chains Series

The food industry continues to attract considerable interest and attention from various stakeholders - consumers (increasingly concerned about the provenance, safety, nutritional composition and integrity of the food they buy), government (increasingly concerned about the health of the nation and the sustainability of agriculture and the food industry), academics (increasingly challenged by the juxtaposition of food poverty and food surpluses, economic and environmental sustainability, fast food and obesity, local food chains and global supply networks), practitioners (increasingly perplexed by the relentless pursuit of competitive advantage) and civil society (increasingly perplexed by the lack of strategic vision amongst policy-makers and large food corporations, more interested in returns from the ballot box and returns to shareholders than a return to a more holistic approach to sustainable competitive advantage. What makes the food industry so fascinating is the breadth and depth of the issues that it throws up - unequivocally multi-dimensional in nature and increasingly requiring a multi-functional and multi-disciplinary approach to their analysis, explanation and resolution. The series is designed to fill a gaping hole in the literature for a range of titles, from practical textbooks to research-based monographs, appealing to broad target market with a common interest in gaining a better understanding of how food chains function, why they break down and what corrective actions different stakeholders can take in pursuit of diverse objectives.