Reconsidering the Cereal Chain Organization for Food and Green Chemistry
Résumé
Cereals are vital resources for a large number of human activities. Their different
applications have led to the structuring of multiple chains: food chains (milling, baking,…),
feed industries, starch industry, and more recently biofuels. All those sectors mobilize a
range of different economic actors who are seeking to maximize their economic
performances by adjusting their business models to the ability to produce, to add value and
to respond to consumer preferences. Such a sector-oriented optimisation leads to striving
for maximal production of the main product of each chain without taking into account the
opportunities for by-products. Accordingly, this may result in our societies on one hand to a
conflict of interest between cereal sub-sectors (as for example between food and fuel) which
in turn reinforce competition between these sectors. On the other hand, this may lead to
waste streams and insufficient usage of potentially valuable co-products.
Moreover one should take into account population growth, food insecurity, increasing food
related health issues, climate changes, pressure on fossil fuels, etc. A global solution is hard
to reach, since one is dealing with balances between offers and demands by market prices.
Such a balance is subjected to fluctuations inherent to agricultural production, which can
cause highly significant price distortions and severe local problems. The alternative to this
approach is to review the organization of the full cereal chain, from production to final enduses,
with the aim to both optimize each of these individual supply chains as well as
maximize the output of the entire system, locally and globally.
Accordingly, a more holistic approach applied to the complexity of the full cereal system is
required today. This paper will propose a combined local and global approach based on
reverse engineering to reorganise cereal chains to better fulfil the different uses of cereal
products.
Domaines
Génie des procédés
Origine : Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s)