Slicing the fruit five ways: An economic, social, and environmental assessment of five mango food supply chains in Burkina Faso

Food supply chains (FSCs) not only need to be competitive, but increasingly face scarce resources and societal pressure for sustainable development. This paper assesses the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of five different FSCs that are all competing for the same primary product. We used the value chain methodology for the economic sustainability, life cycle assessment for the analysis of environmental sustainability, and a scoring approach for social sustainability. We applied these methodologies to five FSCs competing for mangoes in Burkina Faso: 1) the FSC of fresh mangoes exported (by boat or by plane) to the European Union, 2) the FSC of fresh mangoes exported to continental Africa, 3) the FSC of dried mangoes exported to Europe, 4) the FSC of mango juice and puree, and 5), the FSC of fresh mangoes consumed in Burkina Faso. For each FSC, we considered: 1) the added value per kilogramme; 2) male and female employment; 3) the contribution to the national economy; 4) working conditions; 5) the contribution to household food and nutritional security; 6) damage to human health per added value, 7) damage to ecosystems per added value, and 8) increased resource scarcity per added value. None of the FSCs obtained a perfect score. The domestic FSC had the best sustainability indicators and the African FSC distributed the highest share of added value to farmers. The number of middlemen, the operating costs, the trade value of the mangoes, and bargaining power, are the main factors affecting the distribution of the added value. The informal sector is a major factor that affects the social assessment through access to land and to most social rights. Distance and transport technology are the main factors that affect the environmental sustainability. Our results will help improve benchmarking of FSCs in a sustainability framework, targeting of private funding investment, and policy support for sustainable development.