Risk and resilience in agri-food supply chain SMEs in the pandemic era: a cross-country study

ABSTRACT

The sustainable and resilient agri-food systems are essential to ensure food security and nutrition for a rapidly growing world population. While the unprecedented COVID-19 outbreak has undoubtedly disrupted numerous businesses, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of agri-food supply chains (AFSCs) were seen more vulnerable to disruptions due to their unique operational challenges. This research explores how SMEs of AFSCs across developing and developed contexts were disrupted by COVID-19 inflicted risks and what useful measures were embraced to cultivate supply chain resilience (SCRE). A qualitative research method, with 24 semi-structured interviews including two developing (Pakistan and Tanzania) and a developed (Australia) country, was employed. The cross-country analysis unveils a noticeable difference in risk and SCRE profiles between developing and developed contexts. We devise a systematic account of COVID-19 inflicted risks and related SCRE strategies to survive and thrive amid the current pandemic and similar future crises. Multiple perspectives from different contexts would assist practitioners and policymakers to learn the key lessons, enhancing resilience of agri-food SMEs. This is among the few studies exploring risk and SCRE in SMEs of AFSCs across developing and developed contexts, benchmarking robust strategies applied by some leading firms. Our proposed conceptual framework offers a roadmap to building more resilient agri-food SMEs.

KEYWORDS:

• Covid-19
• supply chain resilience
• risk
• SMEs
• agri-food supply chain
• qualitative analysis

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethics approval

The research has received human ethics approval with the following human Ethics approval number: 0000022010.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: [Grant Number GF.ESADD.RA6010500CT01].