This paper investigates the problem of sustainable rural supply and urban distribution of fresh food products in central Colombia. Paradoxically, while farmers in the countryside suffer from poverty due to the low profitability of the agricultural activity, inhabitants at urban centers pay high prices for fresh and nutritious foods. In this work, we propose a supply chain system and a business model based on food hubs located on existing (and often abandoned) public facilities in the central region of Colombia. There are many examples in which the hub strategy has facilitated trade and logistics in supply chains. However, few studies consider the particularities of the presented case. We study a business strategy through a mathematical model which considers both the sustainable and efficient operation of the food hubs and better trading conditions for farmers. We propose a variant of the competitive hub location problem adapted to this case study. We tested the model under different scenarios such as changes in the attractiveness parameters, operation costs, and profit margins. The results suggest that if hubs are able to attract farmers, the model can be both sustainable for the hub concessionaires and for the farmers.

The Food Bank of Bogotá is a non-profit organization whose primary mission is to provide food aid to economically vulnerable people and others. One of its key operations is the distribution of food to over 600 beneficiaries. In this research, we present the design and implementation of a computer application that calculates the delivery schedule of the Food Bank vehicles. Firstly, the beneficiaries of the Food Bank are clustered into four delivery zones, and their orders are assigned to specific weeks of the month. Next, a variant of the Capacitated Periodic Vehicle Routing Problem (CPVRP) is solved with an open-source tool. Lastly, routes are assigned to days of the week depending on the traffic conditions. The numerical results showed significant improvements in terms of total time reduction with respect to the business-as-usual practice. This tool is essentially for the monthly planning of the distribution of routes. These routes eventually will need adjustments because of changes in the beneficiaries’ demand, traffic conditions, fleet availability, and so forth. At the time of writing, the model is being integrated with another application that records and tracks the orders in the Food Bank. The users of this application would handle the daily operation and will make manual adjustments if needed. Finally, we discuss the main limitations of the application, which lie primarily in the need to educate both the Food Bank staff and the beneficiaries’ management, who are accustomed to last-minute orders, very tight time windows, and reactive delivery schedules that are highly inefficient.