Equity, Health, and Sustainability with PROVE: The Evaluation of a Portuguese Program for a Short Distance Supply Chain of Fruits and Vegetables

Abstract

PROVE is a Portuguese program that empowers small-scale farmers organized into local networks to directly commercialize baskets of locally produced fruits and vegetables to consumers. This study applied a post-test-only non-equivalent group design to evaluate the resulting influence on the social empowerment of farmers and on consumer diets. The method included conducting a survey of PROVE farmers (n = 36) and a survey of PROVE consumers (n = 294) that were compared against matched samples of Portuguese respondents of international surveys (European Social Survey, n = 36 and the INHERIT Five-Country Survey, n = 571, respectively). PROVE farmers reported higher scores for perceived influence on the work environment than the national sample. PROVE consumers were more likely to eat five or more portions of fruits and vegetables a day in comparison to the matched sample of Portuguese citizens (average odds ratio: 3.05, p < 0.05). Being a PROVE consumer also generated an impact on the likelihood of consuming no more than two portions of red meat a week (average odds ratio: 1.56, p < 0.05). The evaluation study suggests that the promotion of short supply chains of fruits and vegetables can make a positive contribution to a healthier, more sustainable, and fairer future in food consumption.

Identifying effective interventions to promote consumption of protein-rich foods from lower ecological footprint sources: A systematic literature review

“…The remaining 51 studies formed the final sample for this review (see Fig 1). These studies were divided into two categories: individual level and micro-environmental/structural level [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73] studies. The summary of each study is provided in Tables 3 and 4.…”

“…Micro-environmental/structural level studies refer to those studies which aimed to change immediate food environments in which people make food choices. They included nine RCTs [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64], two CTs [65,66], three field experimental design studies [67,68,73], one quasi-experimental design study [69], and three pre-post design studies [70][71][72]. The number of participants ranged from 24 to 3,066 participants, and the participants' age ranged from 12 to 75 years and older.…”

“…The number of participants ranged from 24 to 3,066 participants, and the participants' age ranged from 12 to 75 years and older. In eight studies, there were no significant differences in gender ratio of the sample (less than 10%) [56][57][58]62,63,66,69,70] and six studies did not provide the sex differences between the participants [59,60,65,67,71,72]. Nearly all studies took place in dining facilities, for example restaurants, cafe ´s or worksite canteens; one study selected a farm and a small community as their participants [70].…”

Diversified Farms Facing the Covid-19 Pandemic: First Signals from Italian Case Studies

“…Covid-19 has sped up this change and has strengthened the sales in Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs). These chains, in turn, reinforce sustainability [28] and can give a positive contribution to a healthier and fairer future in food consumption [29]. In brief, SFSCs might facilitate the transition towards sustainable local agri-food systems that are capable of granting access to quality food to all [30].…”

Encouraging and Enabling Lifestyles and Behaviours to Simultaneously Promote Environmental Sustainability, Health and Equity: Key Policy Messages from INHERIT

“…Policy makers were directly involved in the implementation of number of the 15 INHERIT case studies [ 43 ] by, e.g., taking part in relevant inter-sectoral platforms, embedding them in long term planning proposals, or undertaking legislative actions with the aim of making the initiatives more sustainable. INHERIT case studies reflect that some relatively small-scale initiatives, like PROVE (Lisbon, Portugal) [ 51 ], which aims to make organic produce directly available to consumers, and some of the initiatives involved in the STOEMP network, struggled to deal with possibly unnecessary administrative barriers. These included stringent procurement rules and excessively complex or onerous food safety standards.…”