Supply chain network design and food loss in the U.S. fresh produce system

Abstract

The U.S. food supply chain provides year-round access to a diverse range of fresh fruits and vegetables, but the perishability of these products makes food loss a persistent sustainability challenge. While previous studies have primarily focused on food loss occurring at the production and consumption stages, less attention has been given to losses arising from aggregation, handling, and transportation activities within the supply chain. This study develops a national-scale optimization model to evaluate how supply chain network design influences food loss and to quantify the trade-offs between economic efficiency and food loss reduction. The model integrates facility location decisions, economies of scale, transportation flows, and transportation-related food loss for eleven fresh produce categories across the continental United States. Results show that transportation-related food loss can be reduced by approximately 78 million pounds without increasing total system costs through strategic reconfiguration of facility locations and product flows. Additional reductions of up to 10% can be achieved through a more spatially dispersed network structure with shorter transportation distances, although at the expense of higher operating costs and reduced economies of scale. The findings demonstrate that food loss is strongly influenced by supply chain configuration and that substantial reductions can be achieved through strategic network redesign. The proposed framework provides a decision-support tool for evaluating trade-offs among economic performance, resource efficiency, and food loss mitigation in fresh produce supply chains.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2026 · DOI ↗