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solve. Thus, new computing concepts - like Grid computing - are needed to deal
with upcoming and existing challenges.
11.1.2 Problems of Current Solutions
In order to achieve the economic potential in terms of cost savings and increasing
earnings by using modern ICT, some gaps need to be bridged. Food supply chains
usually consist of companies very heterogeneous in nature - many small or medium-
sized farmers located around the world, local consolidators, logistics providers and
some very large food retailers like Carrefour or WalMart. Figure 11.1 shows the
distribution of European agricultural holdings by economic size, where 1 ESU
(European Size Units) is roughly corresponding to either 1.3 hectares of cereals
or 1 dairy cow or 25 ewes. All farmers with less than 16 ESU are categorized as
small principal or part-time farmers, which are more than 78% of all farmers in the
European Union (Benoist and Martins 2008).
Fig. 11.1:
Distribution of European agricultural holdings (Benoist and Martins 2008)
Most of the companies are running different Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
software or even paper-based solutions to manage their production or transport
capacities. Due to this heterogeneity, supply chain partners are not able to coordinate
their capacities towards new dynamic production networks by using advantages of
modern ICT to lower transaction costs. Also, trust-building and commercialisation
support mechanisms are not available today or at least not in an integrated solution.
On the one hand this leads to dead capital; on the other hand, tremendous
amounts of food are wasted because overcapacities cannot be sold. Kantor et al.
