Experiences and Implications of Supply Chain Governance for Sustainable Food Systems—Taking the International Coffee Certification System as an Example
Supply chain governance with a “multi-objective criteria system” as its core can bring about systemic change and facilitate the transformation of agri-food systems towards sustainable development. In the context of the multiple challenges facing the food system, it is of great practical significance to summarize relevant experiences in a timely manner in order to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals. In this paper, the network characteristics of coffee supply chain and its social, economic and environmental problems are analyzed based on Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations data. Taking the international coffee certification system as an example, it is found that the 2019 global trade network of green coffee beans belongs to the scale-free network, which is characterized by heterogeneity, imbalance and separation of production and marketing, and has faced problems such as unfair trade, blindly expanding planting area and leading to deforestation. In this paper, fair trade certification, 4C certification, UTZ certification and other international certification systems for coffee supply chain issues and related practical experience are introduced. Finally, it concludes that China should strengthen the monitoring of the effectiveness of the current certification system and encourage regions where conditions permit to explore the establishment of an environmental labelling system for agricultural products, and extensive food-health-environment education to achieve more effective food supply chain governance.