Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing

Agriculture Value Chain Decision-Making.

A Short Review

Jorge E. Hernandez1(&), Janusz Kacprzyk2, Hervé Panetto3,

Alejandro Fernandez4, Shaofeng Liu5, Angel Ortiz6,
and Marco De-Angelis7
1
University of Liverpool Management School, Liverpool, UK
[email protected]
2
IBSPAN, Systems Research Institute,
Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland
3
UL, Université de Lorraine, Nancy, France
4
UNLP, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, La Plata, Argentina
5
UoP, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK
6
UPV, Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain
7
The Institute for Risk and Uncertainty, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK

Abstract. Increasingly challenging global and environmental requirements have

resulted in agricultural systems coming under increasing pressure to enhance their
resilience capabilities. This in special to respond to the abrupt changes in resource
quality, quantity and availability, especially during unexpected environmental
circumstances, such as uncertain weather, pests and diseases, volatile market
conditions and commodity prices. Therefore, integrated solutions are necessary to
support the knowledge-management, collaborative ICT solution, risk manage-
ment and regulation management across agriculture stakeholders. Therefore, and
based on the on-going work under the H2020 RUC-APS project research net-
work, this book chapter is oriented to contribute to agriculture value chain
decision-making field to cover the current need on gathering a common under-
standing and appreciation of new trends in agriculture value chain, in special the
multi-disciplinary challenges. For this, a short a literature review is conducted to
summarise the main findings on real application and current research trends. This
within the objective to propose an integrated framework based on better use of
communication ways, standardised structures, development of training and
awareness, regulation based initiatives and vertical Integration.

Keywords: Agriculture value chain
Collaboration
ICT
Risk management

Case studies
Review

1 Introduction

In order to understand the agriculture concept from the operations and supply chain
management perspective, the agribusiness terminology was established by [1] and can
be understood as the sum of all operations involved in manufacture and distribution of

© IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2017

Published by Springer International Publishing AG 2017. All Rights Reserved
L.M. Camarinha-Matos et al. (Eds.): PRO-VE 2017, IFIP AICT 506, pp. 761–774, 2017.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-65151-4_68
762 J.E. Hernandez et al.

farm supplies, production operations on the farm, and the storage, processing, and
distribution of farm commodities. But, considering the current decision-making chal-
lenges in agribusiness, specially regarded to promote costless coordination of pro-
duction and distribution, finding solutions to fixed market imperfections and
consequent price distortions and how to include private strategies in agriculture and
related sectors [2], uncertainties in information across the agribusiness related stake-
holders have oriented agribusiness analyst to get focuses primarily on the following
main topics: agricultural environment and resources; risk and uncertainty; food and
consumer economics; prices and incomes; market structures; trade and development;
and technical change and human capital. These topics remains open in terms of
required support and solutions, but more important, open to support research from
theory and practice. In this context, uncertainties in information implies none-effective
decision-making processes for farmers and to each related participant who belongs to
the agriculture value chain.
In addition to this, and as established by [3], new kind of uncertainties coming from
the climate global change issue is now another point of concern in agriculture and, even
if it is a well-known issue, empirical research results has just been started to be released
[4–8], but, even though, analysis on the main implications to agribusiness,
decision-making, and collaborative networks in agriculture is still presented as a gap in
the international literature. Thus, and as a source of uncertainty, climate change drives
another type of uncertainties regarded to the lack of complete knowledge about the
ecosystems reactions to climate change. This has important implications on how
decision-making approaches are to be adapted to these new challenges. In fact, one of
the main goals in agriculture and for the whole agri-food sector, is to find the right
responses and strategies to the agribusiness challenges in a much faster way [9], but
also dealing with the main uncertainties collaboratively. In addition to this, it is
important to consider the role that farmers can play in overcoming these uncertainties if
they are supported accordingly. This means providing them the right guidance,
information, training and collaborative approach for developing solutions to their
problems. But, due to the lack of information (specially regarded to the local regions
cultures), this is certainly becoming a major task every day more. Thus, and consid-
ering current agribusiness based framework analysis done by [10, 11], practitioners and
researcher are still looking at finding the efficient ways to answer questions like: how
current growing in risk and uncertainty affects agribusiness stakeholders?; is the
development and adoption of new technologies adding value to agribusiness related
activities?, how can rapid market responsiveness be implemented so support changes in
industry structure? and; are collaborative networks applicable in agribusiness domains
to deal with interoperable aspects?.
Therefore, in the light of these current open challenges in agribusiness, the aim of
this research is to provide an up-to-date contribution to field of Agriculture Value
Chain decision-making, in special by updating and contrasting main challenges and
requirements based on current literature and case studies. To accomplish this, the
rationale is supported by considering following structure: (1) in the second section the
research method is explained; next (2) the brief literature review on cases, knowledge
management, collaborative ICT, risk management, regulations in agriculture value
chain management is presented; after this (3) a brief analysis is presented in the section
 Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain 763

four within the purpose of addressing the main recommendations, from research, in
order to support the main challenges and requirements from agriculture value chains,
thus the RUC-APS framework is proposed and; finally (4) main conclusions and
further research is presented.

2 Research Method

Considering the existing literature review in the field already performed by [3, 12–21],
the method to support this review will consider sources from journals, books and
reports in field of agriculture within a view of: value chain, ICT, risk, regulations and
case studies. For this purpose, a qualitative analysis is to be performed to provide the
current pictures on the already mentioned challenges. The main selected sources for
this review are: http://scholar.google.com, http://www.scopus.com and http://www.
sciencedirect.com.
Therefore, the main objective from this brief literature review is identify the main
gaps and trend in the current research, understand the main agriculture value chain
challenges and requirements, realise how theory and method is supported by empirical
evidence and to understand how the main application are taking place in the field. The
main findings from this research are presented in the following sections.

3 Short Literature Review on Challenges and Solutions

for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain Decision-Making

Regarding to the findings in agriculture needs from [30], it was shown that nearly a third
of the global population relies on agriculture for a living, and the growth in this sector
has been at least twice as effective at reducing poverty as growth in other sectors. But,
progress on agriculture-based solutions can be frustratingly slow, therefore practitioners,
researchers and academics are every day more involved in this field. In fact, challenges
in agriculture might vary from biological science, going through health-care to social
science and technologies. Which topics has been extensible reviewed [22–27]. But also,
from the agribusiness decision-making point of view [28, 29], there is a high need for
generating integrated and collaborative solutions, so that farmers can be embedded in
the participative solutions generation process. Therefore, this review section is to be
focused on decision-making process related to agriculture value chains.
In fact, a high variety of new digital applications, oriented to accelerate the
improvement on productivity and growth in this sector [30], can be found, but not all of
them are effective or resilient enough once agriculture value chains are facing unex-
pected events. As a tool, ICTs can provide the forum to access information and the
necessary training to agriculture value chain stakeholders by enhancing their commu-
nication strategies, thus their decision-making process. ICTs will consist of electronic
and digital based solutions for capturing, processing, sharing, storing and retrieving
information, hence for broadcasting and using data and images through technology
764 J.E. Hernandez et al.

based mechanism [31]. In this context, the dilemma in most of the agriculture domains is
regarded to decide and realise whether to move towards to a more traditional, organic
farming or to a modern biotechnology-based agriculture [32], which necessarily implies
the combined use of: Knowledge Management, ICT, Collaborative solutions, Decision
Support Systems and regulation management. However, the scenario is even more
complex, and a well and up-to-date understanding is required.
In fact, whether a wide variety of agricultural technologies and sustainability
pathways are required to co-exist (worldwide at least), the current need from agriculture
value chain stakeholders have moved from choosing between existing technologies to
focus on the new technological developments through innovation [33]. But this has
also led to the wide unused number of technologies as well the clueless from farmers
about what the main criteria for selected the right solution might be. Therefore, by
considering agriculture value chains market’s needs, agri-food supply (farmers and
manufacturers) and demand (supermarkets and other food retailers) established by [34],
the following section presents the key findings in author contributions. This starts by
considering we challenges addressed for veridical collaboration, information sharing
and climate change within a view of agriculture value chain. From this perspective, and
considering the current agribusiness value chain challenges, papers were reviewed and
selected. Regarding to this, agribusiness decision-making related paper were selected
on the key following domains: Collaborative ICT, Risk Management, Ontology driven,
Technology transfer, Regulation analysis considering the following approaches: Supply
chain management, Multi-stakeholder, Decision Support System, Real-life, Case study.

3.1 Case Studies Analysis in Agriculture Value Chains Decision-Making

Challenges
There are many challenges involved in the agriculture value chains. These challenges
can be seen from several angles and their implication can be grouped in three main
themes, such as: vertical integration, information sharing and regarding the uncer-
tainties due to the climate change. From this analysis is depicted that since the 80’s
there is a continuous interest for developing solutions to support these challenges. In
overall, the analysis considers references that discusses the agriculture value challenges
from a real-life case study point of view (see Table 1).
As depicted in Table 1, it can be found that vertical Integration and information
sharing are two topics widely discusses, as well climate change. In addition, it is also
possible to realise that authors also address ICT aspects to be considered once setting
up potential solutions to food contamination problem, food security policies and
postharvest practices, where the main objective in supporting these challenges is to
ensure the food quality and safety.
In addition to this, one of the key identified challenges is regarded on how
managing the knowledge across the agriculture value chain and their stakeholders. This
since the level of tacit knowledge is very high, thus the main solution for these
challenges will be around gathering the tacit knowledge to make it explicit. Therefore,
the knowledge management might be contrasted across the agriculture value chain
 Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain 765

Table 1. Case Studies based on main agriculture value chains decision-making challenges.
Author Agriculture value chain decision-making challenges Main aspect to
support
[35] India horticulture industry has ineffective information Vertical
communication between producers and end-customers. The Integration
government introduced a physical wholesale market terminal to
allow producer and end-customers to meet and share
information
[36] Both wholesalers and retailers need to know producers and Vertical
production information. Integration
[37] Most farmers use wire phone or cellular phone to seek Information
information. The Internet is not a popular method as lack of Sharing
infrastructure, the cost of using the internet and the literacy rate
of farmers.
[38] Farmers need a wide range of information to make a good Information
decision. Information for farmers is very fragmented and Sharing
unreliable. It is suggested to use a database that store
information all together to facilitate farmers’ decision making.
[39] The common way for India farmers to get reliable information is Information
to go to external organisations. External organisations are Sharing
usually far from farmers. Farmers need to drive there and it is
very costly and time-consuming. The access to information is
restricted or prohibited. Access to digital information is a
bottleneck for HVC performance improvement in India.
[40] Choosing the right are for growing vegetable is a major issue. In Climate
special under climate change, hence it is suggested to use change
information communication between nation, regional and
local-level management.
[41] Under a Value Chain Approach, environmental parameters, Climate
such as temperature, affects the product cycle time, in this case change
the example of grape was studied, where it was realised the
agriculture value chain, due to high temperatures was required
now to deal with ’s faster ripening process time.
[42] Weather tracking database predicts the weather and makes Climate
planning arrangement, which successfully improves the change
effectiveness of producing quality grape.
[43] The quality of vegetable will be indirectly affected by climate Climate
change due to the change of pest species. A model shows the change
relationship between the temperature and the species of pests
helps predict and control pest in agriculture.

stakeholders, thus be used for developing more efficient solutions. For this purpose, the
following section, by considering the knowledge management aspects, gather the
number of authors contributing to the combined perspective of Knowledge Manage-
ment, Collaborative ICT, Risk Management, Ontology driven, Technology transfer and
Regulation analysis; versus Supply chain management, Multi-stakeholder, Decision
Support System, Real-life and Case study.
766 J.E. Hernandez et al.

3.2 Knowledge Management, Collaborative ICT, Technology Transfer

and Risk Analysis Contributions to Agriculture Value Chain
From Table 1 analysis, it is depicted that the main challenges remain on how to
determine the right selection and application of existing and emerging technologies, as
well as on how to consider the adequate ongoing R&D for small farmers at small-scale
food processing operations, therefore to move toward reducing the cost of food. But
this also within an special focus of making a significant contribution to food produc-
tion, environment and also to provide a good living for the operators/farmers [34].
From this, it also important to consider that due to the great advancement on ICTs, a
high advancement in agriculture planning has ben also produced. One of the reasons
for this is due to the fact that, ICT’s can not only be cost-effectively and practically
employed to facilitate information delivery, but also to support an effective knowledge
sharing among farmers and stakeholders [44]. Hence, the success of agriculture value
chain will necessarily depends largely on decisions by stakeholders on questions such
as what to grow, where to sell, how to maintain the main sources, and how to manage
common resources [45].
It is also acknowledged that stakeholders, involved in agricultural and rural
development, are highly required to communicate, negotiate and to reach decisions that
can achieve results. The main failures are commonly regarded to the extension on
inability to deal with communication concerns. In fact, and based on [46], works at the
farming/producer level are often ineffective in their communication with partners,
which is due to the lack in training in methods of communication. They often have
technical, but not communication orientation [47], which generated an unbalanced
situation. Thus, and due to the variety of uncertainty sources in weather, soil, water and
land conditions, diverse models, methods of analysis and solutions are needed on
which the knowledge from farmers will be gathered and manged accordingly. This will
activate the need of using different ways to support the variety of challenges in agri-
culture value chains, but in special to develop usable solutions to farmers [48]. Nev-
ertheless, with the rapid development of information technology, the agriculture
information dissemination models are constantly evolved and required of analysis for
solutions [19]. Table 2 shows, therefore, the main findings for Supporting Agriculture
Value Chain Decision-making considering a multidisciplinary approach.
Aligned with this, Table 2 shows where the key authors contribute to the main
areas. Thus, it depicts the fact that, in general the agriculture value chain is widely
known, and a variety of solutions and approaches are considered to overcome most of
the challenges.
Nevertheless, not all the approaches are considered in the same way, and certainly
they do not weight the same. This is the clear case of Collaborative ICT and Regulation
analysis. In fact, where collaborative solutions are required at every level, there is an
evidence that regulations advancement are not always aligned and up-to-date with these
requirements. In addition to this, whether the application based research marks a high
presence on authors contributions, it is also evidence the connection from theory and
practice is low. This means that contributions on theory are still a pending matter once
looking at real-life applications. Whether theory in operational research and ICT
developments are high, these are good under a theoretical aspect, but lacks on
 Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain 767

Table 2. Contribution analysis to Agriculture value chain decision-making.

Dimension/approach Supply chain Multi-stakeholder Decision Real-life Case
management Support study
System
Knowledge [30, 32, 49] [47, 49, 50] [47, 51, 52] [12, 18, 30, 47,
management 49, 50]
Collaborative ICT [19, 20, 53–55] [14, 53, 56, 57] [15, 20, 51, [12, 21, 30, 53,
53, 58–60] 56–58, 61, 62]
Risk management [17, 55] [17, 63, 64], [17, 65] [17, 63–65]
Ontology driven [48, 55, 66–69] [63, 66, 68, 70] [66, 68–72] [48, 63, 67, 69,
71, 72]
Technology transfer [30, 73] [12, 73–75] [12] [64, 73, 75, 76],
Regulation analysis [15, 33, 48] [63, 77, 78] [74, 78] [63, 78]

applicability. Moreover, the development of decision support systems is also wide, and
most of the researchers look at its applications, but just a few look at the value chain
and/or multi-stakeholders approach. Which means the challenges on developing col-
laborative and participatory agriculture value chain decision support systems remains
as an open topic. An interesting aspect was the evidenced on using/creating ontologies
for supporting the ICT development of agriculture value chain solutions. Nevertheless,
even if a variety of cases can be found in this topic, the use of ontologies still lacks on
their real applicability, in especial to support the technology transfer aspects and
interoperability across agribusiness technologies. In fact, decision support systems
based training on agriculture value chain stakeholders is a key aspect, but has been
vaguely covered by research authors and it is depicted as one of the less covered topics,
thus a high level of opportunities for enhancing this topics as a research theme in
agriculture value chain is depicted.

4 Analysis

From the short literature review, and aligned with the contribution from [79], it is
realised that main barriers for adopting ICT solutions are: (1) the lack of physical and
human resource infrastructure, (2) too much innovation blocks the use of older tested
and in use technologies imposing an unacceptable cost, (3) ICT adoption based on
working within communities takes longer in many cases because of the lack of
understanding and awareness of the needs and challenges of small-scale farmers,
(4) Ensuring leadership within the political and governmental environment,
(5) Developing leadership and agents of change at all levels including communities,
(6) Sharing ICT adoption funding including public/private partnership and (7) Sharing
details of successful projects including business opportunities and their benefits.
Therefore, at the agriculture value chain level, the creation of efficient agricultural
market, which delivers agricultural products, from the farmer to the consumer is a need.
This implies that, behind every challenge and contributions, there is a need for effi-
ciently make functioning agriculture value chains to commit with the markets, thus to
768 J.E. Hernandez et al.

make producers and consumers increase their benefits. But unfortunately, the supply
chain management models are not as efficient as desired, and ICT integrations are still
an open requirement to support the agribusiness based decision-making.
The challenges facing supply-chain management and agri-business can be seen
from three main perspectives. In the first place, the lack of accessibility to regulated
markets generates difficulties to establish standardised agriculture value chains solu-
tions. In the second place, the lack of participatory developments, implies a lack on
effective ICT developments for Agriculture value chain stakeholders, specially farmers.
Finally, lack on standard regulations that understand the micro-levels of the value
chain, implies inefficiencies across the value chain stakeholders.
In this context, from the reviewed papers, and by analysing and understating the
main implications from coming from Tables 1 and 2, the following suggestions for
supporting the current challenges and solution generations for enhancing the Agri-
culture Value Chain Decision-making are addressed:
• Better use of communication ways: Once the Agriculture value chain is formed,
and in order meet their desired objectives efficiently, the information sharing is
essential, thus collaborative ways must be set in place, specially to monitor and
trace information between stakeholders.
• Set standardised structures: Through standardised structures it will possible to
achieve more effectively the efficiency desired levels. In this context, standards
might follow two approaches: (1) the first is regarded on how the agriculture
products are produced, packaged, transported and delivered; (2) the second is
regarded to ICT systems to be used across the value chain. Therefore, these standard
approaches will enable stakeholders to efficiently manage their inefficiencies as well
as to interoperate better with the high variety of systems available on these agri-
culture value chain environments.
• Development of training and awareness: Due to the current changes and evo-
lution on market needs, hence into agriculture value chain structures, specialists,
that will understand the high variety of value chain structures, is required. Hence,
training, coaching, counselling and mentoring can be extended to all the parties in
the supply chain. In this way, collaborative ICT solution might be better applied in
several levels of the value chain.
• Regulation based initiatives: Agriculture regulations plays a leading role, in
special with the new globalisation trends. International value chains are everyday
more common; hence, robust and adaptable regulations are required to deal effec-
tively with unexpected uncertainties from each region. The objective of this
approach, is to generate consistent agriculture value chains across every level, thus
to mutually reinforce them and commit with the common contradictory objectives
from regions and stakeholders, therefore, standard protocols (ontologies) must be in
place to support collaborative ICT, Risk management and regulation development.
• Vertical Integration: Considering the new trends on technologies as well as the
dynamics of world economy, agribusiness stakeholders, in special farmers, are
required to get collaborative involved, so that the continuous provision of safe and
ample raw materials can be guaranteed amongst farmers, processors and traders.
Therefore, the vertical integration will promote shorter value chains and an
 Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain 769

increment on total returns shares. Therefore, to cope with the main uncertainties,
farmers will get more incentives to achieve value chain requirements, such as
certifications and global environmental requirements. Therefore, agriculture stake
holder will be in a better position to use standardised technologies to share infor-
mation and support collaborative decision-making processes.

4.1 The RUC-APS Framework Proposal

Therefore, to provide a crystallised view on how a potential solution might looks like,
the Fig. 1 presents the RUC-APS framework. Through this, an advancement in agri-
culture based-decision making is provided. Thus, the agriculture value chain will be
seen in terms of the integration of Global Agribusiness, Risk and Uncertainty, end-user
driven solutions, inputs, products for exports, packaging & cold storage, processing
and distributions. Therefore, the agriculture production systems, and its impact over the
end users, will be mainly driven by participatory ICT developments.

Fig. 1. The RUC-APS Framework. (sources: www.ruc-aps.eu)

As depicted in Fig. 1, the RUC-APS framework is oriented to contribute to the

generation of horizontal and vertical collaboration strategy for supporting agriculture
value chain in terms of: the organisations development for building mutual and beneficial
value chain relationships in agriculture. For this the proposed RUC-APS framework
propose enhancing the interactions between small and medium farmers with major value
chain actors (often smallholders and businesses in the upstream chain segment) and
larger, better-endowed businesses further downstream; and, to integrate this with policies
that will support the environment on which value chain actors operate. Therefore,
RUC-APS provide innovation for the development of agriculture production systems
and their impact over the end-users by focusing on participatory ICT developments.
770 J.E. Hernandez et al.

5 Conclusions

From this brief literature review, it can be realised that there is a clear evidence that
current growing in risk and uncertainty are affecting affects agribusiness stakeholders’
decision-making, especially in terms of dealing with the key commodities, such as
price. Thus, if the supply chain management is improved in the agriculture sector, it
will lead farmers to improve their business scenario. In fact, the key aspects addressed
from authors were vertical integration, information sharing and climate changes, as
main source of current challenges to be supported.
In this sense, it was noticed that one of the critical aspect to improve the agriculture
supply chain management is the one regarded to adoption of new technologies, which
necessarily implies that the information flow should be managed standardly. This will
enhance the information sharing, thus will create value and will improve the perfor-
mance, even more once information sharing will be established across regions and
sectors, hence rapid responses to the market will be required. In fact, as depicted from
the reviewed literature, the major reasons causing information sharing issues are that
producers not always have access to the right ICT, hence access to information is not
that straight, which implies a current need in implementing collaborative network
structure to deal with ICT interoperable aspects.
Another aspect is that agriculture value chains are facing is climate change, which
implies a higher need for collaboration to overcome the main uncertainties, in special
amongst stakeholders from similar latitudes. From this point of view, nearly all solutions
which have considered a knowledge management point of view, presented an effective
information flow, thus a better agriculture value chain performance. In addition to this,
there was a clear evidence that authors dealing with knowledge management were more
inclined to share more information, hence to improve their performance.
Finally, from the authors contribution analysis, it can be also concluded that ICT
solutions for agriculture problems aims to increase information accessibility, variety,
sharing to stakeholders, and present a relevant contribution to farmers, thus presenting
a high potential of increasing the decision-making efficiently. As a further research,
considering the RUC-APS project activities, this short review will be extended by
supporting the generation of a validated agriculture value chain conceptual model for
the main stakeholders’ decision-making and the main ICT application will be addressed
for the seven countries on which the project is being applied (UK, Spain, Italy, France,
Poland, Chile and Argentina). In addition, an extended version of this literature review
will be produced by analysing more international case studies and adding quantitative
analysis for this review, as well as by establishing the most up-to-date agriculture value
chain road-map and covering the main interoperability due the main agriculture value
chain integration requirements.

Acknowledgments. Authors of this publication acknowledge the contribution of the Project

691249, RUC-APS: Enhancing and implementing Knowledge based ICT solutions within high
Risk and Uncertain Conditions for Agriculture Production Systems (www.ruc-aps.eu), funded by
the European Union under their funding scheme H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015.
 Challenges and Solutions for Enhancing Agriculture Value Chain 771

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