Certification of Markets, Markets of Certificates: Tracing Sustainability in Global Agro-Food Value Chains

Arthur P. J. Mol and Peter Oosterveer
Additional contact information
Arthur P. J. Mol: Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, Wageningen 6700 EW, The Netherlands
Peter Oosterveer: Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 8130, Wageningen 6700 EW, The Netherlands

Sustainability, 2015, vol. 7, issue 9, 1-21

Abstract: There is a blossoming of voluntary certification initiatives for sustainable agro-food products and production processes. With these certification initiatives come traceability in supply chains, to guarantee the sustainability of the products consumed. No systematic analysis exists of traceability systems for sustainability in agro-food supply chains. Hence, the purpose of this article is to analyze the prevalence of four different traceability systems to guarantee sustainability; to identify the factors that determine the kind of traceability systems applied in particular supply chains; and to assess what the emergence of economic and market logics in traceability mean for sustainability. Two conclusions are drawn. Globalizing markets for sustainable agro-food products induces the emergence of book-and-claim traceability systems, but the other three systems (identity preservation, segregation and mass balance) will continue to exist as different factors drive traceability requirements in different supply chains. Secondly, traceability itself is becoming a market driven by economic and market logics, and this may have consequences for sustainability in agro-food supply chains in the future.

Keywords: voluntary certification initiatives; agro-food supply chains; traceability; sustainability; marketization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/9/12258/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/7/9/12258/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:7:y:2015:i:9:p:12258-12278:d:55380

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().