Socially responsible sourcing and contracting in agricultural supply chains under demand and yield uncertainty
研究了一家有社会责任的采购公司如何通过合同农业与现货或远期交易结合，在不确定环境下影响农民收益和公司利润，对关注可持续农业和扶贫的学者有参考价值。
Alleviating poverty and enabling smallholder farmers to sustain their businesses is a key objective for governments and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). One solution for increasing smallholder farmers' incomes is to build supply chains that connect them to the market while ensuring fair treatment in trade. In this paper, we analyze an agricultural supply chain comprising of a socially responsible buying company, a food trader, and a farming cooperative. The buying company uses a contract farming program with the cooperative and has the option to use ad hoc transactions or forward contracts with the trader. Using an analytical framework in a scenario containing uncertain demand and yield, we capture the interactions between the buying company and the dual supply sources. Our research indicates that contract farmers benefit more when the buying company uses ad hoc transactions with the trader. However, when utilizing forward contracts, contract farming has the potential to negatively impact the buying company's profits, particularly during periods of high demand uncertainty. Additionally, a greater degree of social responsibility demonstrated by the buying company increases the probability of implementing the “ad hoc transaction + contract farming” strategy, which ultimately benefits farmers and consumers.