Crop Supply Chain Research Articles

A Blockchain-Based Framework to Make the Citrus Crop Supply Chain Transparent and Reliable in Agriculture

Citrus is an important food security crop in the world, and the health benefits or otherwise of the commodity depend on the quality and safety of the grain. It is used in several by-products such as citrus pudding, citrus fritters, and citrus bread. With more and more people paying attention to food safety issues, attention to the safe and stable source of citrus is becoming more important. Problems in this supply chain including those that result in reduced revenue for the farmers and the government, and major losses during off-season arise primarily from lack of trust, dependability, openness, accountability, origin, and safety. To address these difficulties, we present a secure and transparent framework using Blockchain technology to monitor citrus crops from the farm to the consumer’s table. We propose a new cryptocurrency token named citrus coin (CC) which will be used in the process of purchasing investors in the citrus n value chain. This system includes an elaborate demonstration, a CC cryptocurrency wallet, and an Initial Coin Offering (ICO). The functioning of the framework is based on smart contracts to manage the transactions which are traceable and transparent through the entire citrus crop supply chain while the CC can be converted into traditional fiat money. Also, we use the decentralized storage system (InterPlanetary File System (IPFS)) to store information about corporations and sellers to improve security, transparency, and access to data. Furthermore, our experimentation and analysis, demonstrate that the proposed framework provides better results compared to the existing solutions for the supply chain in terms of contract verification time, regular gas transaction efficiency, and block generation latency.

Sugarcane Yield Estimation Using Satellite Remote Sensing Data in Empirical or Mechanistic Modeling: A Systematic Review

The sugarcane crop has great socioeconomic relevance because of its use in the production of sugar, bioelectricity, and ethanol. Mainly cultivated in tropical and subtropical countries, such as Brazil, India, and China, this crop presented a global harvested area of 17.4 million hectares (Mha) in 2021. Thus, decision making in this activity needs reliable information. Obtaining accurate sugarcane yield estimates is challenging, and in this sense, it is important to reduce uncertainties. Currently, it can be estimated by empirical or mechanistic approaches. However, the model’s peculiarities vary according to the availability of data and the spatial scale. Here, we present a systematic review to discuss state-of-the-art sugarcane yield estimation approaches using remote sensing and crop simulation models. We consulted 1398 papers, and we focused on 72 of them, published between January 2017 and June 2023 in the main scientific databases (e.g., AGORA-FAO, Google Scholar, Nature, MDPI, among others), using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology. We observed how the models vary in space and time, presenting the potential, challenges, limitations, and outlooks for enhancing decision making in the sugarcane crop supply chain. We concluded that remote sensing data assimilation both in mechanistic and empirical models is promising and will be enhanced in the coming years, due to the increasing availability of free Earth observation data.

Blockchain based transparent and reliable framework for wheat crop supply chain.

The wheat crop that fulfills 35% of human food demand is facing several problems due to a lack of transparency, security, reliability, and traceability in the existing agriculture supply chain. Many systems have been developed for the agriculture supply chain to overcome such issues, however, monopolistic centralized control is the biggest hurdle to realizing the use of such systems. It has eventually gained consumers' trust in branded products and rejected other products due to the lack of traceable supply chain information. This study proposes a blockchain-based framework for supply chain traceability which provides trustable, transparent, secure, and reliable services for the wheat crop. A crypto token called wheat coin (WC) has been introduced to keep track of transactions among the stakeholders of the wheat supply chain. Moreover, an initial coin offering (ICO) of WC, crypto wallets, and an economic model are proposed. Furthermore, a smart contract-based transaction system has been devised for the transparency of wheat crop transactions and conversion of WC to fiat and vice versa. We have developed the interplanetary file system (IPFS) to improve data availability, security, and transparency which stores encrypted private data of farmers, businesses, and merchants. Lastly, the results of the experiments show that the proposed framework shows better performance as compared to previous crop supply chain solutions in terms of latency to add-blocks, per-minute transactions, average gas charge for the transaction, and transaction verification time. Performance analysis with Bitcoin and Ethereum shows the superior performance of the proposed system.

A Review on Potential Biofuel Yields from Cover Crops

Millions of hectares of cover crops are planted in the U.S. and European Union to manage soil erosion, soil fertility, water quality, weeds, and climate change. Although only a small percentage of cover crops are harvested, the growing cover crop planting area provides a new biomass source to the biofuel industry to produce bioenergy. Oilseed crops such as rapeseed, sunflower, and soybean are commodities and have been used to produce biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Other cover crops such as cereal rye, clover, and alfalfa, have been tested on small or pilot scales to produce cellulosic ethanol, biogas, syngas, bio-oil, and SAF. Given the various biofuel products and pathways, this review aimed to provide a comprehensive comparison of biofuel yield from different cover crops and an overview of the technologies that have been employed to improve biofuel yield. It was envisioned that gene-editing tools might be revolutionary to the biofuel industry, the work on cover crop supply chain will be critical for system scaleup, and high-tolerant technologies likely will be needed to handle the high compositional heterogeneity and variability of cover crop biomass for biofuel.

A Blockchain-Based Framework to Make the Rice Crop Supply Chain Transparent and Reliable in Agriculture

Rice is one of the major food crops across the globe, and its quality and safety highly influence human health. It is the basis of many different products, including rice flour, rice bread, noodles, rice vinegar, and others. Therefore, the rice supply chain has garnered increasing attention due to the high demand for food safety. Furthermore, malpractices in the rice supply chain can impact farmers by generating low revenues despite their great efforts in rice cultivation. In addition, they would cause governments to suffer significant economic losses due to the high cost of importing rice crops from other countries during the off-season. These issues derive from the lack of reliability, trust, transparency, traceability, and security in the rice supply chain. In this research, we propose a secure, trusted, reliable, and transparent framework based on a Blockchain for rice crop supply chain’s traceability from farm to fork. A new crypto token, the Rice Coin (RC), is introduced to keep a record of all transactions between the stakeholders of the rice supply chain. Moreover, the proposed framework includes an economic model and a crypto wallet and introduces an Initial Coin Offering (ICO) for the RC. Based on smart contracts, a transaction processing system was developed for the transparency and traceability of rice crops, including the conversion of the RC to fiat currency. Furthermore, the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) is proposed in this research to store encrypted data of companies, retailers, and farmers, so to increase data security, transparency, and availability. In the end, the experimental results showed a better performance of the proposed framework compared to already available supply chain solutions in terms of transaction verification time, transaction average gas cost, and new block latency.

Tracking indirect water footprints, virtual water flows, and burden shifts related to inputs and supply chains for croplands: A case for maize in China

Increasing crop yields to ensure an adequate food supply under water and land scarcity is dependent on intensive agricultural inputs (such as fertilizers, pesticides, agri-films, or energy) which consume water resources and generate water pollution. However, the burden shifting of water quantity and quality stress from producers to importer and consumers through agricultural input production, trade, and consumption have been largely overlooked. Here, taking maize in China as the study case, we mapped step-by-step indirect water footprint (IWF) of maize production, virtual water (VW) flows related to inputs driven by maize consumption, and the resulting burden shifting of water quantity and quality. Bottom-up WF accounting approach was applied. The maize consumption was intercepted into two stages: the crop production stage (CPS) from raw materials to the farm, and the crop trade stage (CTS) from farm to fork. Results show that the national average blue and grey IWF of maize production was 3.91 and 26.86 m3/t, respectively. In the CPS, the input-related VW flowed from the west and east coast to the north. In the CTS, the VW flows from the north to the south. Blue and grey VW flows in CTS caused by secondary flows of VW in CPS accounted for 48% and 18% of the total flows, respectively. In total VW flows along the maize supply chain, 63% of blue VW and 71% of grey VW net exports occurred in the north of severe water scarcity and water pollution levels. The analysis highlights the impact of the crop supply chain on water quantity and water quality in the consumption of agricultural inputs, the importance of step-by-step supply chain analysis for regional crop water conservation management, and the urgent need for integrated management of agricultural and industrial water resources.

The evolution of symbiotic innovation, water, and agricultural supply chains

AbstractThe water literature has mainly investigated the diversion and distribution of water from the source to the end users or the utilization of water at the farm level in crop production. This paper presents a supply chain perspective that links the innovation supply chain of water delivery and irrigation with the complete water supply chain to the crop and the crop supply chains. These supply chains are symbiotic. Changes in the demand for crops, agronomic technology, and knowledge about water will modify the water infrastructure, irrigation technology, land‐use and crop production patterns, and the pricing of water and related commodities. The parameters that guide investment in water innovation and the design of the water supply chain depend on political, economic, and technological considerations that have coevolved over time with water and crop systems. Evidence from California and elsewhere supports the findings of the paper.

A model of the U.S. food system: What are the determinants of the state vulnerabilities to production shocks and supply chain disruptions?

AbstractWe adapt a Ricardian general equilibrium model to the setting of U.S. domestic agri‐food trade to assess states’ vulnerability to adverse production shocks and supply chain disruptions. To this end, we analyze how domestic crop supply chains depend on fundamental state‐level comparative advantages—which reflect underlying differences in states’ cost‐adjusted productivity levels—and thereby illustrate the capacity of states to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of such disruptions to the U.S. agricultural sector. Based on the theoretical framework and our estimates of the model's structural parameters obtained using data on U.S. production, consumption, and domestic trade in crops, we undertake simulations to characterize the welfare implications of counterfactual scenarios depicting disruptions to (1) states’ agricultural productive capacity, and (2) interstate supply linkages. Our results emphasize that the distributional impacts of domestic supply chain disruptions hinge on individual states’ agricultural productive capacities, and that the ability of states to mitigate the impacts of adverse production shocks through trade relies on the degree to which states are able to substitute local production shortfalls by sourcing crops from other states.

An integrated strategic framework for large-scale crop planning: sustainable climate-smart crop planning and agri-food supply chain management

Today, the benefits of climate diversity and scaling up farmers' coordination to the landscape are particularly crucial in meeting increasing food demand and planning crop cultivation. The growing population with changing dietary patterns creates a higher demand for sustainable, coordinated agri-food networks, which consolidated the value chain of the agri-foods at both the farmers and the market side. In this paper, a strategic planning framework from a large-scale crop supply chain perspective is presented for National crop Growers’ Associations (NGAs). The proposed framework aims to better equip crop growers, in a complex decision situation in taking advantage of complementary climate and market opportunities, to plan: what, when, and how to produce crops by using water-sustainable cropping plans. The coverage of this framework is at the national level to be able to take advantage of climate diversity and complementary markets in provinces with various climatic conditions. Using a multi-stage model on a countrywide management level and crop evapotranspiration and water requirement estimates, during crop growth in the different geographical and climatic ranges, it provides advisedly estimation for the regional (counties) quantity of optimum cultivation, storage, and transportation at the minimum cost and optimum land and water usage as a reform plan for optimizing existing harvesting practices. Moreover, assurance of total local farmers' income, re-cultivation in the planning horizon, and perishability of crops are considered. These considerations allow the proposed comprehensive framework to support the successful high yield practices and more water productivity in susceptible regions and months by using the regional climatic advantages, including crop evapotranspiration, effective precipitation, and irrigation productivity. In order to illustrate the application of the framework, it was applied to 429 counties and 30 provinces of Iran for potato, onion, and tomato farming systems in 2020. Computational results guarantee small-scale farmers' income, stabilize food demand coverage, and save 397 million m 3 of irrigation water yearly.

Legal Steps to Secure the Tobacco Supply Chain: A Case Study of Poland.

The threat of tobacco tax evasion and avoidance is the most commonly mentioned argument against tax hikes. Increasingly, the focus of legislators is on leaks in the tobacco crop supply chain, in which raw or cured tobacco that was never taxed finds its way to smokers. To study the process undertaken by Poland to secure the tobacco supply chain, we analyzed the 2013–2018 legislation around tobacco supply and interviewed a key stakeholder in the Government of Poland. We found that farmers and intermediary entities can trade tobacco only if registered with the government. Farmers are required to report the size of their fields and the weight of their crops to the state authorities. Each purchase within the supply chain is also reported by both the seller and the buyer for cross-validation. This has prevented manipulation within the system, while the mere threat of heavy fines related to an excise tax law violation and/or the administrative burden associated with becoming an excise tax payer (had the violation been prosecuted) has significantly contributed to securing the tobacco supply chain. The experience of Poland demonstrates that securing the tobacco supply chain is complicated but also a tractable problem. This case can be widely applicable to other countries.

The oil & protein crop supply chain in South America: introduction

The oil & protein crop supply chain in South America: introduction

Intra- and inter-year variability of agricultural carbon footprints – A case study on field-grown tomatoes

The performance of agricultural systems and their environmental impacts can vary considerably within a single crop supply chain, due to differences in farming practices, soil properties, and yearly climatic conditions. In this paper, we characterised the variability of carbon footprints of open-field tomato production by analysing a comprehensive farm dataset gathered over 4 years. We also assessed the importance of the different drivers of variability as compared to model uncertainties. The primary data used in this study were collected from 189 farms from the Extremadura region in Spain and Portugal over a period of four years, from 2012 to 2015. We modelled the carbon footprint of these farms using the Cool Farm Tool model developed by Hillier et al. (2011) and conducted statistical analysis on the results to understand the relative importance of inter-year and intra-year variability. We performed sensitivity analysis to understand how sensitive the results were to variability in the farmers' input parameters and to the uncertainty in model parameters. This was done by varying all factors one-at-a-time, and then by running a Monte Carlo simulation where all uncertainties were propagated simultaneously. Results clearly show significant inter-year and intra-year variability in carbon footprints of tomato production within the study region. We observed approximately 20% variation for each annual carbon footprint (intra-year variability), resulting in an overall 28% coefficient of variation in the aggregated footprint across the different years. The carbon footprint of the whole tomato supply, calculated with the 4-year dataset, showed a weighted geometric mean of 51 kg CO2-eq/t and a weighted GSD of 1.32, meaning a 95% confidence interval of 29–89 kg CO2-eq/t. Results also show that small farms were characterised by a larger variability than larger ones. This highlights the need to weight farm results by production volumes if the objective is to obtain a carbon footprint for the total production in a given region. The carbon footprint was found to be mainly sensitive to variability in farm practices, notably extent of pump irrigation and choice and amount of fertiliser used, with model uncertainties influencing the results to a relatively smaller extent. Further work is needed to extend these findings to other crops, regions and impact categories.

Dedicated Energy Crop Supply Chain and Associated Feedstock Transportation Emissions: A Case Study of Tennessee

and Bradly Wilson This study minimizes total cost for single-feedstock supply chains of two dedicated energy crops, perennial switchgrass and biomass sorghum, in Tennessee using a spatial optimization model. Greenhouse gas emissions from the transport of feedstock to the conversion facility were estimated for respective feedstock supply chains. Results show that different demand for land types from two feedstocks and the geographically diverse landscape across the state affect the economics of bioenergy crops supply chains and feedstock transportation emissions. Switchgrass is more suitable than biomass sorghum for biofuel production in Tennessee based on the supply chains cost and feedstock hauling emissions.

Supplier hoarding, government intervention, and timing for post-disaster crop supply chain recovery

This work presents a multi-methodological approach to address the issue of post-disaster crop supply chain recovery under the influences of government intervention and supplier hoarding intention. A conceptual model which characterizes the antecedents of supplier hoarding intention is proposed, and validated using survey data. Grounded in the empirical study, an analytical model is then proposed for decision analysis of a two-tier crop supply chain recovering from post-disaster supply disruptions. Analytical results indicate that hoarding behavior reduces the time taken by supply chain members for supply recovery; and however, contributes to mixed effects on the expected profits of supply chain members.

Smallholder farmers’ perceptions of factors that constrain the competitiveness of a formal organic crop supply chain in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

The 48 organic-certified members of the Ezemvelo Farmers’ Organisation in KwaZulu-Natal were surveyed during October-November 2004 to assess what factors they perceive constrain the competitiveness of a formal supply chain that markets their amadumbe, potatoes and sweet potatoes. They identified uncertain climate, tractor not available when needed, delays in payments for crops sent to the pack-house, lack of cash and credit to finance inputs, and more work than the family can handle as the current top five constraints. Principal Component Analysis further identified three valid institutional dimensions of perceived constraints and two valid farm-level dimensions. Potential solutions to better manage these constraints are discussed, including the need for the farmers to renegotiate the terms of their incomplete business contract with the pack-house agent.

An optimization model for energy crop supply

AbstractIn this article we describe an optimization model, a mixed integer program, to determine the optimal locations and capacity sizes of biomass‐based facilities in energy crop supply chains, and demonstrate its use using data for Great Britain. We show the utility of the model for planning the optimal locations of biomass‐based facilities by investigating the supply of feedstock from Miscanthus for Combined Heat and Power (CHP) in Great Britain, based on data of current electricity demand. Results show that CHP cost directly influences its optimal location, and the price of bioelectricity from Miscanthus. At the coarse spatial resolution of the available energy demand data, the sale price of Miscanthus does not greatly influence the quantity of Miscanthus sold in Great Britain. Only when the hypothetical sale price of Miscanthus was closer to CHP cost, was the quantity of Miscanthus sold influenced by the variation in the sale price of Miscanthus. In future, we will apply the model using electricity and heat demand data at fine spatial scale currently being located, which will allow the implications of local production of Miscanthus for CHP to be explored.

Improving working relationships for smallholder farmers in formal organic crop supply chains: Evidence from KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

The 48 members of the Ezemvelo Farmers' Organisation (EFO) in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (SA), that are fully-certified as organic farmers were surveyed in October-December 2004 to assess their perceived levels of satisfaction, trust, cooperation and commitment in a formal supply chain producing amadhumbes (a traditional vegetable tuber), potatoes and sweet potatoes for a major SA supermarket group. Empirical recursive models show that a high level of satisfaction in the working relationship results in these farmers trusting the pack-house agent more. High levels of trust, in turn, lead to higher levels of both commitment to, and cooperation in, the supply chain. A simultaneous-equation model showed that EFO members with higher levels of commitment tend to be more cooperative, and that members with higher levels of cooperation tend to be more committed toward the working relationship. These results suggest that strategies to improve the working relationship with the pack-house agent need to promote satisfaction, trust, cooperation and commitment. For example, co-investment in better crop storage facilities at farm-level would promote satisfaction and hence trust. There is also scope for more cooperation in the planning of new organic crop products to grow and market, and to remove some price uncertainty by giving EFO farmers more information about prices that they will be paid by the pack-house in this supply chain.