Improving the capacity of local food network through local food hubs’ development

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic and humanitarian challenges such as war and conflict, climate changes, and economic crises bring unexpected humanitarian challenges, such as food insecurity. Especially for developing countries, this is a double crisis, food poverty and COVID-19 pandemic. This situation needs an alternative food network (AFN), which can improve the local food sources to fulfill the food demand. The local food hubs’ (LFHs) development as an AFN that considers local producers and customers could serve as an alternative strategy to reduce the uncertainty of food availability. However, the challenge in developing LFH in developing countries is the problem of logistics efficiency. Therefore, this study discusses the development of food logistics efficiency by determining the optimum location of LFH and the fulfillment of food supply for each optimum location of LFH in rural areas. Robust optimization is applied to the Multi-Objective Many-to-Many Location-Routing Problem (MOMMLRP) model to handle the uncertain demand and production capacity. This study focused on West Java Province, Indonesia, as areas that represent developing countries. Based on our result, eight sub-districts have been determined as an optimum location to develop LFHs. This study also elaborates on the food network in the worst situation that needs regional food hubs’ (RFHs) support. The RFH support can be used when the LFH faces an unexpected problem that cannot fulfill their demand.