Exploring Strategies, Technologies, and Novel Paradigms for Sustainable Agri-Food Supply Chain Ecosystems Design and Control

This chapter explores the neglected interconnections between different dimensions, entities, and ecosystems composing the agri-food supply chain and illustrates a novel paradigm for the design and control of more sustainable, resilient, and affordable agricultural, production, and distribution processes and operations. Control theory provides the framework for developing a methodology to control different state variables of agri-food systems and drives toward holistic sustainability targets. Different scientific and engineering disciplines contribute with technologies for acquiring the state variables the agri-food ecosystem and for leading improvements under tailored control strategies. Whilst a rigorous formulation of such a paradigm, together with a proof-of-concept, is devoted to future publications, a survey of recent advances in agri-food system control and optimization supporting this framework is illustrated and organized.