Challenges of operations research practice in agricultural value chains

Abstract

Operations research (OR) methodologies in optimization have been extensivelyapplied to problems in different agricultural value chains in recent years. Wetake a critical stock take of such applications to date, and reflect on theircontribution to value chain sustainability and resilience. The stock take showsthat the rate of industry or policy adoption has been limited, partly due to thecomplex interactions across the segments of agricultural value chains, and themathematical representation being different to the way the decision makerunderstands the problem. OR practice in agriculture is also being asked to covergreater spatial scales and engage more stakeholders, and is required to embraceresilience and sustainability objectives. A single-minded focus on optimizingparts of these complex systems without considering the whole system is no longeradequate, and new methods and approaches are required. Complex systems sciencemethods are being applied to analyse the dynamics of complexsocial–ecological systems, and are starting to find a home in industrialsupply chain analysis. We demonstrate how three complex system methods,agent-based modelling, dynamical systems modelling and network analysis, can beapplied to agricultural value chains as a means of gaining insights into systemdynamics under different and dynamic conditions. The relevance and utility of ORin ensuring the success of agricultural value chains into the future willrequire practitioners to understand and model value chains as complex adaptivesystems.