A model to enhance the penetration of the renewables to power multistage food supply chains

Food supply chains (FSCs) allow the effective and safe delivery of food products from farmed crops to consumer forks. The challenging properties of many varieties of food, that is, perishability, quality decay, and short shelf life, require shipping and storage conditions able to guarantee high standards of safety and quality for the final consumers. Behind these conditions lies the demand for large amounts of energy to power refrigerated storage and shipping modules, to speed handling and transportation, etc. A switch from fossil fuels to renewables is mandatory to increase the sustainability of modern FSCs. Traditionally, no integration has taken place between the renewable power system design and the supply chain infrastructure location and management. The attention placed on FSC designs for green energy is rising. Thus this chapter provides a high-level analytic model for efficient design of FSCs in the direction of integrating renewable plants, for example, solar, photovoltaics, wind, biomass, etc., as a key input for green operations, so that the node location and flow allocation is driven by both network efficiency and the green energy supply possibilities.