Exploring supply chain issues affecting food access and security among urban poor in South Africa

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-01-2021-0007
• Published date: 20 October 2021
• Date: 20 October 2021
• Pages: 27-48
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Virva Tuomala,David B. Grant

Exploring supply chain issues

affecting food access and security

among urban poor in South Africa

Virva Tuomala

Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland, and

David B. Grant

Department of Marketing, Hanken School of Economics, Helsinki, Finland and

Faculty of Commerce, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

Purpose –Access to food through retail supply chain distribution can vary significantly among the urban

poor and leads to household food insecurity. The paper explores this sustainable supply chain phenomenon

through a field study among South Africa’s urban poor.

Design/methodology/approach –Urban metabolic flows is the theoretical basis in the context of supply

chain management (SCM). The field study comprised 59 semi-structured interviews in one South African

township. Data were recorded, transcribed and translated, and coded using NVivo 12 to provide an inventory of

eight themes categorized and patterned from the analysis.

Findings –Findings indicate societal factors play a significant role affecting food distribution, access and

security from a spatial perspective of retail outlet locations and a nutritional standpoint regarding quality and

quantity of food.

Research limitations/implications –The study is exploratory in one township, and while rigorously

conducted, the generalizability of findings is limited to this context.

Practical implications –The study practically contributes by providing guidance for food retailers and

policymakers to include nutritional guidelinesin their distribution planning, as well as the dynamics of diverse

neighbourhoods that exist in modern urban contexts.

Social implications –New forms of retail food distribution can provide better security and access to food for

the urban poor, contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2 Zero Hunger and 11 Liveable Cities.

Originality/value –The study is interdisciplinary and contributes by linking UN SDGs and SCM through

urban metabolic flows from development studies as an overarching framework to enable analysis of

relationships between physical, social and economic factors in the urban environment.

Keywords Food access and security, Sustainable Development Goals, Food retail supply chain distribution,

Urban metabolic flows

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Food security is defined as all people having physical, social and economic access to

sufficient, safe and nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life (FAO, 2009). Two

United Nations’Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) act as a platform highlighting the

complex nature of food security: SDG 2 Zero Hunger and SDG 11 Liveable Cities. SDG 2

Food security

for urban poor

and SCM

27

© Virva Tuomala and David B. Grant. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is

published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce,

distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial

purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence

may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

The authors acknowledge and thank the Hanken Support Foundation at Hanken School of

Economics for providing support to visit South Africa and gather data, the NGO guide to the

neighbourhood and several translators and Stellenbosch University for its onsite support as a base from

which to conduct the research.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 4 January 2021

Revised 27 May 2021

13 August 2021

Accepted 10 September 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 33 No. 5, 2022

pp. 27-48

Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-01-2021-0007

provides objectives related to agricultural production and nutritional levels (Veldhuizen et al.,

2020) while SDG 11 contain an urban goal striving for liveable cities, which further

strengthens the notion of urban significance in global development (Barnett and Parnell,

2016). However, research on this phenomenon is lacking despite over half the global

population residing in urban environments.

The concept of urban is itself very diverse. Social, political and historical factors

influence the fabric between different urban contexts as well as within a single city. Access

to food supply chains varies significantly within urban areas with some areas marginalized

by a lack of formal retail outlets, leading to notable levels of household food insecurity.

Juxtaposed with precarious living conditions of many poor urban areas, urban food

insecurity is thus tantamount to a humanitarian crisis, but often gets bypassed by other

urban concerns (Maxwell, 1999;Haysom, 2015). We therefore approach urban food security

in this paper from an interdisciplinary perspective grounded in the notion that urban

dwellers are predominately net food buyers and therefore dependant on the retail food

supply chain.

Causes of food access and security are ambiguous, man-made and their onset slow (Van

Wassenhove, 2006), which makes it a challenging phenomenon to address. Additionally, the

complexity of the global food system further exacerbates notions of power in urban food

retail (Tuomala, 2020). Local food supply chains are increasingly marginalized due to large

global retailers dominating the market (Maertens et al., 2012). Such retailers are managed

from a Global North [1] perspective; hence, subtleties of different contexts may be missed.

The sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) literature is expanding to include

external stakeholder pressure, diverse contexts and social issues in addition to economic and

environmental sustainability (Touboulic and Walker, 2015). Nonetheless, social issues

remain under researched in SSCM with the urban poor excluded from regular supply chain

activities (Yawar and Seuring, 2017), and such studies, which employ a Global North

perspective on sustainability, ignore different nuances of food supply chain dynamics in poor

urban neighbourhoods in the Global South (Pagell and Shevchenko, 2009;Touboulic and

Ejodame, 2016).

SDG 2 insufficiently addresses much of the supply chain between production and

household nutrition or consumption (Das et al., 2018). Reardon (2015) and Veldhuizen et al.

(2020) refer to this as the “hidden”or “missing”middle, respectively, and these concepts refer

to a disconnect between production and nutrition and the array of processes that ensure food

reaches the consumer, i.e. the supply chain. Further, research and measurement of SDGs are

done largely via quantitative metrics, leaving out social, economic, cultural and historical

nuances, which affect diets and vary significantly in urban environment contexts. The notion

of “urban”is heterogenous and therefore difficult to define in exact terms. This poses issues in

how to measure and assess the progress made by SDG 11 (Caprotti et al., 2017). The SDGs

therefore present a unique opportunity and starting point to inform interdisciplinary and

“inter-goal”research and practical action to address these shortcomings.

Our objective is to extend research on these issues to understand factors impacting food

access and security among the urban poor. To achieve that objective, we explore this

phenomenon through three research questions pertaining to how spatial and financial

factors influence urban food shopping dynamics, which aspects of the triple burden of

malnourishment (TBM) are challenging factors, and how these two sets of factors affect

food retail supply chain management (SCM) in an urban poor township neighbourhood in

South Africa. Fol lowing is a literat ure review discussing these factors before presenting

urban metabolic flows from development studiesasatheoreticalframeworkforour

exploratory investigation. Then, the method for the empirical study is presented before

reporting findings from our analysis. Lastly, we conclude the paper with contributions .

IJLM

33,5

28