Open AccessMeasuring the fragility of agribusiness value chains: a case study of the South African lamb chain
Author(s) -
Daniel du Plessis Scheepers Jordaan,
Johann F. Kirsten
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
the international food and agribusiness management review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1559-2448
pISSN - 1096-7508
DOI - 10.22434/ifamr2017.0103
Subject(s) - fragility , agribusiness , context (archaeology) , chain (unit) , quality (philosophy) , value chain , value (mathematics) , economics , food chain , business , position (finance) , supply chain , microeconomics , marketing , actuarial science , agriculture , computer science , geography , paleontology , philosophy , chemistry , physics , archaeology , epistemology , astronomy , finance , biology , machine learning
The ability to determine the fragility of agribusiness value chains is valuable to agribusines management practitioners and scholars in a context where risk and uncertainty are increasingly pervasive, consequential and unpredictable. The paper argues for determining the fragility of a chain to adverse events rather than trying to predict the probability and impact of such events. The paper specifically proposes a framework to detect and quantify non-linear consequences in response to progressively deteriorating chain fragility factors. The paper’s approach is a novel alternative to the traditional value chain ‘risk assessment’. Application of the framework to the South African lamb chain reveals that a number of specific factors, like quality and safety performance and cash flow position, have consistently high fragility scores throughout the chain while some factors are uniquely localized to a specific role-player or activity, which highlights the techno-economic uniqueness of individual activities in a chain.