Chapter One Introduction

1.1 Research Background and Significance

Agricultural supply chains are complex，systematic and global networks that span from input dealers，raw material producers （farmers） to final consumers and food disposal[1][2].

The perishability of agri-food products and globalization require agricultural supply chain to be designed to meet global food demand.[3][4] However，earlier research indicates that，although such supply chain design management initiatives have great potential to make operations more efficient in a stable environment，they simultaneously increase the fragility and vulnerability of supply chains to disruptions[5][6]. According to Hendricks and Singhal[7] as well as Wagner and Bode[8]，these disruptions lead to the negative performance of firms.

The recent food crises and growing concerns about global climate change coupled with other issues have placed agriculture on top of the international agenda[9]. Also，a United States Development Agency （USDA） report showed that，drought conditions affected approximately 80 percent of U.S. agricultural land in the summer of 2012. However these droughts do have an impact on not only farmers （raw material producers） in a given area，but also upstream buyers，processors and traders which，in turn，affects the entire supply chain performance[10].

Ghana began to export agricultural products to European Union countries before the 1980’s[11]. The country saw a rapid increase in pineapple export from Ghana from 2000 and decrease after 2004 due to the countries inability to mitigate risk sources related to management and operation risks （i.e. slow uptake of the production of new variety） and market related risks. Also South African’s poultry meat and eggs have suffered several bans from their American buyers under the AGOA programme. These similar distributions could negatively affect or link one or more partners within the supply chain that could have a negative influence on the output of agricultural businesses. Hence，there is a huge need to single out all possible risk issues related to agriculture supply chain management and treat them appropriately in order to achieve higher performance within the industry.

Probing into agricultural supply chain risk could go a long way to enable the chain’s participants to manage the risk effectively which could increase the performance of the chain. However，to the best of our knowledge no recent research study has dived into identifying risks，assessing and evaluation potential mitigation strategies in Ghana.

Consequently，this research would empirically aid agricultural supply chain participants such as managers，governments/policies/decision-makers and risk regulators in the critical managerial decision on factors that could weaken the final performance of the agricultural supply chain. By revealing the impact of agricultural supply chain risks on its performance，this could serve as a guide to help in designing and implementing supply chain risk mitigation strategies.

Risk management in supply chains are allied with cost，and it would be prudent for firms engaging in such an expensive venture to know the risk type，their probability，severity and impact on the chains’ performance before initiating mitigation plans. However，it would be equally important to know the effectiveness of the mitigation strategies to be adopted. This book aims to provide evidence of agricultural risk and risk mitigation and its impact on performance to guide participants of the agricultural supply chain.