Investigating the Short Food Supply Chain for Fresh Products in Jordan: Insights from Farmers, Intermediaries, and Retailer

1. Introduction

Food supply chains a key element for food security, economic stability, and the well-being of communities [1]. In recent years, short food supply chains (SFSCs) have gained popularity because of supporting local economies, reducing environmental impact, and providing fresh, high-quality products [2]. SFSCs can enhance community connections and promote sustainable practices by reducing the number of involved intermediaries and reducing the distances between producers and consumers [3]. For instance, reducing the distance between production and consumption points can reduce fuel consumption and carbon emissions [2]. Local agricultural production is key to the Jordanian food security and economic system [4]. In 2022 agriculture contributed 4.81% to the national GDP [5]. It also supported rural livelihoods by offering jobs for people who may lack the higher education requirements to compete in other sectors and promoting food self-sufficiency with an emphasis on export-oriented crops such as fruits and vegetables [6].

However, the Jordanian agricultural sector still faces challenges, including limited financial resources, low productivity in rain-fed areas, and limited climate adaptation activities [7]. SFSCs allow different stakeholders to address these obstacles by promoting self-sufficiency and local products. The current literature on SFSCs has focused on distinct aspects, like SFSC characterization [8], SFSC logistics operations [9], and the comparison between long and SFSCs [10]. However, these studies have not provided a detailed analysis of the underlying factors that can drive operational excellence and possible solutions for challenges facing different stakeholders in SFSCs. Furthermore, there is still a need to conduct more studies in developing areas to understand the dynamics of such food chains [1].

This study aims to bridge this gap by investigating SFSCs for fresh products in Jordan from the perspectives of key stakeholders, including farmers, intermediaries, and retailers, using investigative market structure, stakeholder relationships, operational efficiency, and sustainability practices. It also explores the challenges and opportunities for stakeholders to improve SFSCs. Specifically, the paper aims to answer the following research question:

RQ1. What are the general market structure and dynamics of short SFSCs for fresh products in Jordan?

RQ2. How do stakeholders within SFSCs interact and communicate, and what factors drive such relationships?

RQ3. How efficient are the operations of SFSCs in Jordan, specifically the related logistics activities such as distribution, storage, and delivery?

RQ4. Which sustainable practices are adopted in SFSCs in Jordan, and how do they impact the pillars of sustainability?

RQ5. What are the major challenges facing the key stakeholders in maintaining and improving SFSCs for fresh products?

The paper aims to better understand SFSC dynamics in Jordan by answering these questions. In addition, this research is particularly significant as it fills the literature gap on SFSCs in developing countries, offering a foundation for future studies, initiatives, and policies to improve the efficiency of SFSCs.

The remainder of this paper is structured as follows: section 2 reviews the current literature on SFSCs to offer a theoretical foundation for the study. Section 3 outlines and justifies the research methodology. Section 4 presents the analysis of the results obtained from the interviews with the key stakeholders and discusses them with existing literature. Finally, section 5 concludes with a summary of the findings, implications, limitations, and recommendations for future research.

2. Literature Review

Food is an essential part of human existence and well-being and an integral component of the social fabric worldwide [1]. Food commodities are produced locally or at locations thousands of miles from the point of consumption. FSCs act as the pipeline which links the production and consumption points [11]. Historically, FSCs have served as a critical limitation on human population growth [1] and were predominantly local with simple structure until the Industrial Revolution and globalization that amplified their complexity and global reach through technological advancements in farming, transportation, and processing [1,12].

Managing FSCs is challenging due to the many constraints, such as food quality, safety, and freshness within a short time [13]. Furthermore, inefficiencies in FSC operations can lead to food loss and waste generation [14]. According to Van der Vorst et al. [15], there are two types of FSCs: those handling perishable and fresh farm products like fruits and vegetables and those for processed food products, which create higher-value, less perishable consumer products. Additionally, FSCs can be categorized according to the food mile into long and short chains [16].

The conventional food system is usually characterized by large-scale, highly mechanized, industrialized agricultural operations with extended supply chains (LFSCs). These systems rely heavily on monocultures, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides, which can have adverse impacts such as environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion [17,18]. Although they are beneficial to businesses to extend their market reach, they inherently amplify the geographical and social disconnection between producers and consumers, disempower small-scale farmers, and create impersonal relationships within the supply chain that may lack trust [1,9]. These systems have raised consumer concerns about food safety and environmental impacts and created a necessity for more sustainable alternatives like SFSCs that imply more tendency towards transparency, traceability, and local engagement [19,20,21].

Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) focus on local, close interpersonal connections, social embeddedness, and economic variety while minimizing the number of intermediaries [17,22]. Also, SFSCs come with advantages for local actors, such as allowing more balanced value allocation in food markets by increasing the profit share of small farmers, improving relationships between producers and consumers, fostering new social affiliations by providing local and national products, and improving local food delivery efficiency [10,23]. These chains tend to localize production and distribution processes to promote local, fresh, and diverse food systems, eventually fostering sustainable and community-driven practices [17,22]. A further detailed comparison between long and SFSCs is presented in Table 1.

3. Methodology

The study adopts a qualitative approach to elicit the perceptions of farmers, intermediaries, and retailers in SFSCs to conclude different perspectives. Initially, the authors defined three target groups for interviews: farmers, intermediaries, and retailers in Jordan. These three economically driven actors can share everyday activities, objectives, and obstacles, which facilitates the identification of commonalities and shared best practices. A snowball sampling technique was employed to select an extended participants list. This approach is suitable for reducing the search time for potential participants and ensuring better responses because of the social bonds between participants [26].

Thirty face-to-face, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 farmers, 10 intermediaries, and 10 retailers in September-October 2024. Semi-structured interviews were chosen to balance structure and flexibility, enabling a detailed exploration of participants’ experiences [27]. Three interview guides were designed for the three target groups based on the literature review. Each interview lasted 40-50 minutes and covered questions clustered into market dynamics, relationships and communication, operations and efficiency, sustainability, challenges and opportunities, and future outlook and adaptation. Ethical approval was obtained, and participants were informed about the study’s purpose, confidentiality, and procedures. Data was recorded with participants’ consent and transcribed for analysis.

The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using deductive thematic analysis following Braun and Clarke [28]. The coding process involved familiarizing the data through repeated readings, applying a coding framework to organize text into themes, and refining the coded data to ensure alignment with the thematic framework. Results were organized by theme and examined across participant groups—farmers, intermediaries, and retailers—allowing for synthesis and comparison of their perspectives and insights. Figure 1 summarizes the methodological steps.

The analysis highlights the diversity within the Jordanian food supply chain, with farmers, intermediaries, and retailers demonstrating varying experience levels, educational backgrounds, and operational scales, as illustrated in Table 2.

4. Findings and Discussion

From the thematic analysis, six themes emerged: supply chain relationship, market dynamics, efficiency, sustainability, challenges, and future outlook and adaptation strategies.

4.1. Supply Chain Relationships and Communication

Table 3 illustrates supply chain relationships and the results of the communication theme. The first emerged theme entails the factors that influence and shape the relationship and communication among the key parties in the SFSCs.

Trust and communication are crucial for short food supply chains, maintained mainly through informal interactions, with intermediaries playing a critical role as the communication channel. This aligns with findings by Misleh [22], who emphasizes that SFSCs often rely on trust-based relationships due to the close geographical and social proximity among stakeholders. Similarly, Gori and Castellini [17] highlight that SFSCs foster direct and interpersonal relationships and can enhance trust and transparency compared to conventional long supply chains. Trust is particularly strong between farmers and intermediaries in Jordan, who are mutually interdependent for financial support and market access. However, retailers tend to rely on intermediaries for product quality but have limited direct contact with farmers. This supports the conclusion noted by Jarzębowski et al. [2], in which trust-based relationships facilitate operational flexibility in SFSCs.

The study also reveals flexibility in payment terms and quantities, which enables participants to adapt to market fluctuations but places financial risks disproportionately on intermediaries. A significant weakness identified is the lack of formal traceability systems. Currently, most information about the product’s origin is communicated verbally, and labeling practices by farmers are noticeably rare. This challenge aligns with the findings by Negi and Anand [29], who observed limited formal traceability mechanisms in India’s fruit and vegetable sector. Consumers may not prioritize labeling when purchasing vegetables and fruits and may focus more on price and quality.

4.2. Market Dynamics and Consumer Behavior

The second theme discusses the changing factors in the market and their effects on consumer behavior. For example, Table 4 shows a growing consumer preference for local products, driven by quality, affordability, and the perception of local products being safer, especially during and after the pandemic. This trend is observed across farmers, intermediaries, and retailers. The pandemic further intensified this need since the limited access to imports increased the reliance on locally sourced fresh goods, a shift consistent with Chiffoleau and Dourian’s [30] observation that the pandemic revealed vulnerabilities in global supply chains and underscored the importance of food relocalization for food security and sovereignty. The participants also affirmed the influence of seasonal availability on customer demand, with local products preferred when available, and pricing remains a critical factor in customer retention.

4.3. Supply Chain Operations and Efficiency

The third theme summarizes the key supply chain elements that drive the sector’s performance (Table 5). Efficient handling, transportation, storage, and packaging practices are critical for maintaining product quality in Jordan’s SFSC, yet significant challenges persist due to infrastructure issues. Transportation is predominantly performed by using pickup trucks, which lack temperature-controlling mechanisms to maintain optimal conditions for perishable goods. In addition, most material handling tasks are done manually without using mechanical equipment, which may adversely impact workers and the food itself due to improper handling. For example, similar practices were also reported in India [29].

Storage infrastructure in Jordan’s SFSC is similarly inadequate, with limited access to cold storage or on-farm facilities, forcing farmers to rely on rented spaces and intermediaries to use temporary solutions. Retailers encounter constraints in storage capacity, which can contribute to increasing spoilage and post-harvest losses. Overcoming this issue requires a system control mechanism, as proposed by Aung and Chang [31], who emphasize the importance of cold chain systems in preserving food quality and reducing loss.

Packaging practices in Jordan are generally basic, with small-scale farmers often relying on simple plastic box containers due to the costly, high-quality materials. This results in inadequate protection for fresh products during transport, which aligns with similar observations in India’s fresh products sector, as highlighted by Negi and Anand [29]. The business actors must work on adopting more effective solutions for transport and packaging to enhance product quality and reduce spoilage, for example, by integrating harvesting schedules with the weekly peak demand days, which usually are the beginning and middle of the week. By doing so, farmers can avoid in-farm storage and ship directly to intermediaries.

4.4. Supply Chain Sustainability

This theme discusses the sustainability practices and issues in the Jordanian SFSCs. The participants showed different efforts to reduce the environmental externalities of their operations. Farmers tend to reduce chemical fertilizers, intermediaries utilize reusable loading units, and retailers consolidate last-mile deliveries to reduce fuel consumption. Notably, the three groups affirmed their efforts to minimize packaging material in storing, handling, and product design. Table 6 highlights the key results of this theme.

Economic sustainability is another key outcome; SFSC contributes to local economic growth and stability for farmers, intermediaries, and retailers. For the actors in SFSCs. For example, farmers appreciate their collaboration with local partners to supply the domestic market, enabling them to sustain their revenue stream even in the case of external disruptions. Similarly, intermediaries, acting as brokers, can build informal and stable relationships between farmers and retailers and generate fixed commissioning fees on transactions. Although these commissions aren’t regulated by law, it seems to be a normative practice between the parties involved in the transaction, specifically in the central market. A study by Zubi et al. [32] explained that this commission could burden small farmers and affect their profit margin, especially in the case of low rain seasons.

The social impact of FSCs was also recorded. The three groups agreed on the positive effects of short supply chains on employment in Jordan. Localization of supply chains can create job opportunities, especially in the upstream part, as it requires less technical skills, e.g., framing-related jobs. Also, an interesting remark by some participants is that local fresh products extend choices for consumers and implicitly increase their purchasing power.

4.5. Challenges and Opportunities

The participants shared some common obstacles and areas for improvement that could enhance resilience, efficiency, and sustainability in their operations. The pandemic and lockdowns affected transportation, product availability, and operational costs. For instance, farmers faced shortages of raw materials, intermediaries had limited access to export their products, and retailers experienced inconsistent supply and demand due to import and export restrictions as illustrated in Table 7.

The relationship between the actors has witnessed some disturbances. Farmers reported that intermediaries exert some control over prices and payment schedules. As a result, some intermediaries have noticed reshaping in the relationship, such as farmer-retailer deals and deferred payments from retailers. Contrarily, some retailers complained about the pricing constraints imposed by intermediaries. The participants further suggested solutions to overcome contemporary issues, such as increasing reliance on local agricultural inputs, enhancing storage capacity, improving agrarian planning, and promoting consumer awareness of local products.

4.6. Future Outlook and Adaptation

When asked about their future outlooks, the participants shared concerns regarding rising costs, declining local purchasing power, and climate-related challenges (Table 8). Each group discussed specific strategies to address these issues; for example, farmers plan to prioritize export markets and diversify their crops to include more climate-resilient types. Intermediaries focus on enhancing storage capacity and coordination with their business partners. Lastly, retailers plan to cope with changing consumer demand by strengthening their ties with farmers to achieve quick response and increase their product offerings. Collectively, these efforts aim to enhance resilience and adaptability in the SFSCs in Jordan.

5. Conclusions

This study aims to highlight the underlying characterizations of short food supply chains in Jordan. The relationships among the key business actors are governed by informal communication and trust, which, to some extent, facilitate flexibility and operational efficiency while limiting transparency due to the lack of robust traceability systems. The study found that consumer demand is highly influenced by product quality, affordability, and freshness, and these preferences have grown during the pandemic, which exerted pressure on the supply chain actors to change their sourcing and operational practices. While SFSCs in Jordan are struggling to minimize spoilage and maintain product quality, the pace of improvement is still slowed down by limited transportation and storage infrastructure, basic packaging, and financial constraints.

The interviews with the key supply chain actors demonstrated some sustainability efforts, such as reducing resource usage, creating job opportunities, sustaining economically feasible relations, and strengthening community ties. Nevertheless, the study also addressed these actors’ challenges, such as delayed payments, pricing transparency, and infrastructure limitations. The participants stressed on embracing opportunities for local input reliance, expanding storage, and adopting more climate-resilient practices to improve resilience, efficiency, and sustainability in their supply chains.

Practical recommendations include improving coordination among actors in the supply chain, enhancing storage infrastructure to reduce spoilage and extend the life cycle of the products, and integrating traceability systems to control the flow of goods better.

The main limitation of this study was the small sample size. It was challenging to interview intermediaries as some may work informally. Also, the study relied on self-reported data that may introduce bias and focus on fresh products, which can limit the generalizability to other agricultural sectors or regions. Future research should expand the sample size, include diverse stakeholders such as consumers, and explore other agricultural sectors to provide a more comprehensive understanding of supply chain dynamics beyond fresh products.