Efficiency and Stability of Agricultural Supply Chains

Impact summary

The project examined aspects of agricultural supply chain management to improve the efficiency and stability of these supply chains. This work was designed to assist those linked by these supply chains including producers, supermarkets and consumers with agricultural policymakers.

The work in Thailand showed that for rice farmers production instability would increase under climate change as a result of the higher incidence of both droughts and floods. Moreover, the transfer and storage actions of rice millers and others in the supply chain would amplify this instability, so that the quantities of Thai exports of rice, significant to the residual world market, would become more variable.

In China there are three aspects to the work. How to develop beef production from a dairy-beef industry, how to develop efficient supply chains for beef, and an assessment of likely demand for beef for both home and away-from home consumption.

In Australia the supply chain work focused on meat supply chains. Various analyses were completed including a review of the effects resulting from the vertical integration of the two largest supermarkets, Woolworths and Coles; and an appraisal of the likely export supply chain effects of the introduction of an online marketing system for cuts of meat (PrimeX Connect).

Benefits from the research include more efficient and less wasteful production and distribution of food crops. An important aspect of this relates to the timeliness of agricultural production and distribution, and development of policy interventions to overcome supply chain bottlenecks that lead to either gluts or shortages in international markets.

Impacts of this work relate to change management practice in many countries (from Serbia to Brazil, and from China to Colombia) and in many products (from beef to pharmaceuticals and from plastics to rice). There are also direct impacts expressed by supply chain participants, such as those who benefited from our ex ante cost-benefit analysis of the online meat marketing innovations developed by PrimeX Connect.

PhD programs related to this research include:
- Dong Wang. Assessing the potential from dairy-beef production from dairy enterprises in China.
- Lui Hongbo. Determinants of meat consumption in China.
- Wen Gong. China’s developing beef industry: a supply chain management analysis.
- Ferry Jie. Supply chain practices, trust and commitment in the competitive advantage of the Australian beef industry.

Impact date	2005
Category of impact	Economic Impact
Impact level	Adoption