Logistics: a driver for developing local and short food supply chains

From farm to fork... Through this expression, many consumers convey their desire to “eat local,” with as few intermediaries as possible. This market has a name: local and short food supply chains (CCAP). While certainly not new, they experienced unprecedented appeal during the pandemic crisis of the 2020s. Amid lockdowns and difficulties supplying stores, they demonstrated that they could offer an effective, high-quality alternative conducive to more sustainable development. Yet, at the end of the Covid crisis, the difficulties experienced by some producers were generalized as signs of the decline of these sales channels. Nevertheless, the overall trend is upward compared with 2019, and public policies continue to promote them, as seen on June 19 with the visit by Minister of National Education Edouard Geffray to schools in Eure-et-Loir, where he discussed, among other things, the development of short supply chains in school cafeterias. What the growth of the 2020s ultimately revealed is that the logistics of these supply chains are more complex than might have been assumed: small volumes from a multitude of farms to a multitude of destinations that are often relatively close together, but not always concentrated, making deliveries harder to make profitable. These findings show that putting more local food on our plates is also a logistics issue.

This analysis is confirmed by Gwenaëlle Raton, a researcher and geographer at Université Gustave Eiffel, who has been studying the issue for several years in a multidisciplinary freight transport laboratory. “In 2014, at the request and with funding from the Hauts-de-France Region and the Chamber of Agriculture, we launched a study to understand farmers’ challenges,” she explains. “We looked at how they organized their working time, as well as the tasks they carried out outside their core business. One of them was transporting their products to points of sale.” In 2016, to identify the causes of potential profitability issues, Université Gustave Eiffel and Cerema first developed a spreadsheet, with support from Ademe, the Normandy Region and Île-de-France; in 2018, it became an online calculation tool called Logicoût. “The time and costs devoted to logistics tasks (storage, order preparation, packaging, transport, etc.) can prove to be limiting factors, especially as farmers are not always aware of these costs or of the benefits of outsourcing this link in the chain to professionals,” she concludes.

For the researcher, although building a model specific to local and short food supply chains is a slow process, their growth is undeniable. Laura Giacherio, founder and CEO of La Charrette, a social and solidarity economy company seeking to develop short supply chains by connecting producers, buyers and carriers, shares that view. “When we created the company 10 years ago, it was a collaborative delivery website intended to find a viable logistics model for short supply chains,” she recounts. “We developed it into a freight exchange, then into its current form, because we realized that we actually had to create the entire chain.” La Charrette now operates in 25 areas across France and Canada. “The development of our matchmaking platform was notably boosted by Territorial Food Projects (PAT),” she comments.

Led by local authorities, these PAT were created in 2014 to relocalize agriculture and food systems within their regions by bringing together different stakeholders. Their rollout accelerated sharply from 2021 onward, particularly after they demonstrated the key role they could play in regional food resilience during the Covid-19 health crisis and under the impetus provided by the France Relance plan.

However, volumes in short supply chains remain modest. “In Normandy, direct sales account for only 5% to 10% of total consumption, 55% of which takes place at markets, 15% on farms, and 30% in stores and institutional catering,” notes Cyril Queffeulou, project manager at the professional association Logistique Seine Normandie (LSN). “Although hampered by its multifaceted nature, this distribution model has real potential for growth.” New professions are even emerging, such as that of the public market gardener, at the intersection of agriculture, public service and the ecological transition. Emerging in 2011 in Mouans-Sartoux (06), this profession arose from the municipality’s wish to serve healthy, organic and local food in its school cafeterias. But in the early 2000s, the “local” aspect remained difficult to implement, as farmers were reluctant to engage in public procedures deemed too burdensome. The municipality’s call for tenders therefore went unanswered. France’s first municipal farm was thus created, now employing four public market gardeners—organic farming professionals recruited by the town hall. In 2025, the National Network of Public Farms (RNFP) was established and organizes training for these new agricultural professionals, who are employees of local authorities. According to Ademe, France now has 120 public farms. “Public farms respond to an urgent context: reliance on imports for 40% of fruit and vegetables, biodiversity loss and recurring droughts that are undermining intensive agriculture,” reads Ademe’s website. While the “production” segment appears to be expanding—with one in five farmers using short supply chains in 2010, compared with one in four in 2020, according to the agricultural census—the logistics link remains poorly documented.

This situation—growing demand alongside the difficult emergence of a supply chain model—prompted the Normandy Region to launch the National Conference on CCAP Logistics in 2025. “We had already organized three regional meetings to discuss the obstacles and levers for short supply chain logistics, explains Clotilde Eudier, Vice President for Agriculture and Fisheries at the Normandy Region. These regional meetings helped raise awareness of existing projects and also launch calls for expressions of interest (CEIs). The best projects were thus financially supported through funding from the Region and the European Union. In 2025, the event became national and brought together more than 500 people, the majority of them local authorities and logistics professionals.”

Stef, a logistics company specializing in fresh products, is among these regular participants. “Volumes remain modest, of course—five metric tons shipped per day from the Vire site, out of 1,300—but our extremely dense network means we go everywhere, describes Manuel Genissel, director of Stef’s Vire subsidiary in Normandy. Integrating local producers’ pallets into our existing routes and delivering them to points of sale in the region is a concrete response to a real need. The challenge is finding the right model to do this on a larger scale.” Another sign of the market’s potential is that local authorities are approaching logistics companies and issuing calls for tenders to find sites that would enable consolidation and thus optimize the logistics of these short supply chains.

The Normandy Region has therefore funded a study called CCAP-LOG, in order to lay the foundations for a structured regional ecosystem for more efficient, sustainable and shared logistics. As part of this study, an Atlas of transport and logistics stakeholders in Normandy was produced. “This is an exploratory initiative to identify establishments offering and/or capable of offering logistics services to stakeholders in local short food supply chains in Normandy, explains Guillaume Lebon. The aim of this work was to establish an initial level of knowledge about establishments able to provide logistics services to stakeholders in short food supply chains and, where appropriate, contribute to the development of synergies. In total, 3,886 establishments were identified.” According to Interlud, overall, despite the investment of many stakeholders, synergies are difficult to establish because some producers show little interest in logistics issues—which are sometimes not even included in product prices—and because producers and logistics providers lack familiarity with one another. This leads to mutual misunderstanding and the absence of logistics service offerings tailored to short supply chains. But the dialogue has now begun...