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From production to consumption, palm oil is a global food chain facing various sustainability dimensions. The study focuses on Twitter social media communication strategy of world agri-food chain actors on sustainability of palm oil. The study focused on a content analysis of twitter messages of palm oil producers, agri-food manufacturers and retailers. Preliminary results show that palm oil producers aim at promoting public opinion’s positive image of palm oil. Food manufacturers and retailers instead limit their communication on reacting to consumers’ solicitations, such as questions, doubts or complaints on palm oil use.

Due to pressures such as climate change, globalization, price volatility and scarcity of natural resources, our agri-food chain is urged to make a transition towards more sustainable production. How to organize such a transition, given the various stakeholders involved, and how to monitor progress still remain important challenges. This paper presents a new conceptual framework that follows an integrated chain approach to help address these challenges. First, it tackles the complex ecological and socio-economic challenges along the chain and its members (agriculture and food industries), and second, allows for decision support to chain members and policy. This framework combines two existing theoretical frameworks. The first framework is global chain value analysis (GCVA) of Gereffi (2005) which has its roots in institutional economics. GCVA categorizes five governance types of value chains (markets – modular – relational – captive – hierarchy) based on three variables: (i) the complexity of information and knowledge transfer required to sustain a particular transaction, (ii) the ability to regulate transactions, and (iii) the capabilities of actual and potential suppliers. The second framework, which was first formulated in ecological economics, extends the set of traditional economic resources to various forms of capital in the production system. These are natural (land, water, …), manufactured (buildings, machinery, ...), human (labour, skills,…), and social capital (networks,…). The economic system is fully embedded in the social system which in turn is embedded within the finite ecological system. Throughput of natural, social, human, and manufactured capital allows for the description of agri-food systems in terms of the maximal sustainable use of their stocks and flows. These two frameworks can be combined to perform an integrated system analysis of the agri-food chain, including the governance structures and the boundary conditions for the various types of capital. This paper describes this new conceptual framework illustrated by means of a case study of the agri-food chain in Flanders, Belgium.

Measurement of entire supply chain performance is an important issue, because it allows for "tracking and tracing" of efficacy and efficiency failures and leads to more informed decision-making with regards to chain organization. The ultimate aim of implementing a performance measurement system is to improve the performance of the organization. If supply chains can get their performance measurement right, the data they generate will tell them where they are, how they are doing, and where they are going. The choice of appropriate supply chain performance indicators is rather complicated due to presence of multiple inputs and multiple outputs in the system. This issue becomes even more problematic in the field of food and agribusiness due to specific characteristics of agri-food supply chains. These difficulties require a shift in the focus of performance evaluation and benchmarking from characterising performance in terms of single measures to evaluating performance in a multidimensional systems perspective. Efforts as well as progress have been made in this area but supply chain performance measurement received little attention in the field of food and agribusiness. This paper presents a conceptual framework for selection performance measurement indicators for agri-food supply chain. Four main categories of performance measures are identified as necessary components in agri-food supply chain performance measurement system. Each category contains set of performance indicators. Case study research has been designed in Dutch tomato supply chain to test the proposed conceptual framework.