Short Food Supply Chains as Pathways Towards Carbon-Neutral Rural Development: A Logistics-Adjusted Scenario Analysis for Fresh Produce in Galicia, Spain

Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are often assumed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because food travels fewer kilometers. That inference is incomplete when vehicle size, payload, chain stages and empty returns differ between short and conventional distribution. This study develops a transparent, logistics-adjusted scenario model for one tonne of fresh, unprocessed, non-frozen horticultural produce delivered to a point of sale in Ferrolterra, Galicia. Four configurations are compared: a direct producer-to-market SFSC, coordinated regional SFSC, optimized conventional long chain and fragmented conventional long chain. Representative road corridors connect As Pontes with Ferrol (43.1 km) and Almería with Ferrol (1144.3 km), but the analysis is explicitly prospective rather than an observation of actual trade flows. Well-to-wheel emissions are calculated from 2025 official vehicle-kilometer factors, differentiated by vehicle class and load, and propagated through 100,000 Monte Carlo iterations. Median emissions were 63.4 kg CO2e t−1 for a direct SFSC, 22.0 for a coordinated SFSC, 113.5 for the optimized long chain and 184.0 for the fragmented long chain. Direct SFSC emissions were lower than the optimized benchmark in 95.8% of simulations, but its 95% interval for relative reduction included a small disadvantage (−7.7% to 67.9%). Load factor was the dominant driver of direct-SFSC uncertainty (Spearman ρ = −0.866). At the representative local distance, the van required a payload above approximately 0.263 t to outperform the median optimized long-chain scenario. The results show that proximity is neither necessary nor sufficient for lower transport emissions: coordination and consolidation determine whether distance advantages are realized. SFSCs may support rural transition strategies, but claims about whole-food-system carbon neutrality or rural-development outcomes require empirical logistics data and full life-cycle assessment.