Abstract

The long-term economic, environmental, and social sustainability of a food supply chain (FSC) depends upon the relationships and interactions among its various actors. Multi-agent simulation is a modeling tool that allows goal-directed, autonomous behaviors of heterogeneous actors to be captured at the level of the individual. These small-scale behaviors and interactions result in observable emergent organizational-level outputs, providing a better understanding of the effects of different FSC structures on long-term sustainability. In this paper, a new multi-agent simulation model of an FSC is described, in which two different regional FSC actor types are constructed: farmers and a regional food hub. Each actor is assigned attributes to represent its operational strategy and scale. These attributes contribute directly to the FSC’s overall performance over time, which is measured in terms of the percentage of the simulated region’s demand for food that can be filled by regional sources, which is used as a proxy for economic and social sustainability. Results are analyzed for statistical significance, and implications for FSC sustainability are discussed.