A major challenge of Sustainable Development Goal 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production” is to reduce food losses along production and supply chains. This is particularly critical for fresh food products, due to their perishable and fragile nature, which makes the coordination of the actors all the more crucial to avoid wastes and losses. The rise of new technologies, referred to as “Industry 4.0” powered by the internet of things, big data analytics and artificial intelligence, could bring new solutions to meet these needs. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) allow for frequent exchanges of huge amounts of information between actors in the agrofood chains to coordinate their activities. The aim of the chapter is to provide a state-of-the-art analysis on ICTs used in agrofood supply chains, with a special focus on the case of fresh fruits and vegetables, to analyze the potential and weaknesses which exist in different forms of supply chains for ICTs becoming a “resource” (precious, rare, non-imitable, and nonsubstitutable) prospect and to suggest promising ICTs in this context.

Context. In line with Sustainable Development Goals 3 “Good health and well-being” and 12 “Responsible Consumption and Production”, this paper is concerned with the fragile population of the less-than-3-years-old children. More specifically, it investigates how infant food safety is perceived at the household level and at the level of childhood and health professionals directly in contact with them. Objective. The paper aims to analyze consumer priorities and perceptions of hazards in infant foods qualitatively and quantitatively. Methodology. To do so, a survey was carried out in France on 1750 people representative of the general population. A hybrid method is proposed to analyze the results of the survey, mixing artificial intelligence and statistics. Main insights. Within the declared priorities when choosing infant food, health comes first, with a top ranking for the absence of harmful substances, followed closely by nutritional balance—far ahead of environment, ease of use and price. The results show that the rankings of the hazards that cause the most worry are globally homogeneous throughout the populations (families, professionals, etc.) and higher for chemical contaminants from agricultural practices and packaging. For health professionals, concerns are higher than in the general population for all categories of contaminants, and specific concerns such as risk related to environmental and unknown contaminants are much more prevalent. The perception of risk varies with the food considered. For infant formula in particular, users seem puzzled by somehow contradictory messages. Perspectives. The study is intended to be generalized to Europe.

A second nutrition transition seems to be emerging towards more plant-based diets, curbing meat consumption in developed countries at the beginning of the 21st century. This shift suggests that rational arguments tend to influence an increasing number of individuals to adopt vegetarian diets. This work aimed to understand and simulate the impact of different types of messages on the choice to change food diets at the individual level, and the impact of the diffusion of opinions at the collective level. It provided two results: (1) a network of arguments around vegetarian diets is modelled using an abstract argumentation approach. Each argument, formalized by a node, was connected with other arguments by arrows, thus formalizing relationships between arguments. This methodology made it possible to formalize an argument network about vegetarian diets and to identify the importance of health arguments compared to ethical or other types of arguments. This methodology also identified key arguments as a result of their high centrality in being challenged or challenging other arguments. The results of constructing this argument network suggested that any controversy surrounding vegetarian diets will be polarized around such high centrality arguments about health. Even though few ethical arguments appeared in our network, the health arguments concerning the necessity or not of animal products for humans were indirectly connected with ethical choices towards vegetarian diets; (2) an agent-based simulation of the social diffusion of opinions and practices concerning meat consumption is then introduced. The purpose of this simulation was to capture the balance of vegetarian vs. meat-based diets. It contributes to modelling consumer choices by exploring the balance between individual values and external influences such as social pressure, communication campaigns and sanitary, environmental or ethical crises.