Investigating the Factors, Challenges, and Role of Stakeholders in Implementing Industry 5.0 and Its Impact on Supply Chain Operations: A Study of the Global Agri-Food Supply Chain

Industry 5.0 may assist businesses to become more constructive and competitive in the global economy in the Fifith Industrial Revolution era. Therefore, a critical review of prior literature is presented in this paper to examine how Industry 5.0 will impact supply chain operations within the agricultural sector. Additionally, it examines influencing factors, challenges, stakeholder roles, and recommendations identified from the literature. Industry 5.0 has multiple benefits for the agri-food sector such as improved agility, responsiveness, efficiency, productivity, precise decision-making, as well as cost-effectiveness

The future of Cybersecurity in Italy: Strategic focus area

This volume has been created as a continuation of the previous one, with the aim of outlining a set of focus areas and actions that the Italian Nation research community considers essential. The book touches many aspects of cyber security, ranging from the definition of the infrastructure and controls needed to organize cyberdefence to the actions and technologies to be developed to be better protected, from the identification of the main technologies to be defended to the proposal of a set of horizontal actions for training, awareness raising, and risk management

Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture

Agri-Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. It supports a food chain that generates over £108bn p.a., with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry and exports £20bn of UK manufactured goods. However, the global food chain is under pressure from population growth, climate change, political pressures affecting migration, population drift from rural to urban regions and the demographics of an aging global population. These challenges are recognised in the UK Industrial Strategy white paper and backed by significant investment via a Wave 2 Industrial Challenge Fund Investment ("Transforming Food Production: from Farm to Fork"). Robotics and Autonomous Systems (RAS) and associated digital technologies are now seen as enablers of this critical food chain transformation. To meet these challenges, this white paper reviews the state of the art in the application of RAS in Agri-Food production and explores research and innovation needs to ensure these technologies reach their full potential and deliver the necessary impacts in the Agri-Food sector

Cybersecurity and the future of agri-food industries

Master of AgribusinessDepartment of Agricultural EconomicsMajor Professor Not ListedThe agri-food sector has been undergoing rapid changes in the areas of food production and distribution over the past decades. Over the years, the sector has moved from disconnected, independent and uncoordinated operations to a highly interconnected, dependent and coordinated operations that have enhanced efficiency. The principal cost of this highly efficient system of production is the increased complexity and the exposure to potential risks networked organizations face in the age of the fourth industrial revolution. Increasingly, the physical value of the agri-food sector’s activities has declined even as the intangibles (data, information, insights) have increased in value. As precision agriculture becomes the mainstream and global positioning systems and RFIDs are deployed to enhance traceability and safety, the importance of data protection and security also become exponentially critical to the integrity of the system. That the sector is ahead of the general economy in the adoption of autonomous machines and artificial intelligence implies that the crucial valuation in the sector would be on data generation, organization and analytics, and machine learning. The combined complexity of these systems and processes interacting together create value and at the same time exposes the industry to significant operational risks. For while it was much difficult for cows and grains of corn to be stolen, stealing the data supporting the value embedded in these commodities is becoming increasing easy and riskier. This research is an exploratory excursion into developing an awareness of the scope of the potential risks creeping into the agri-food sector. It raises concern about the nature, typology and structure of these cybersecurity risks, that identifies the skills and capabilities that are needed for the sector to continue producing value to its customers even as it sustains its competitiveness. It focuses attention on building the internal capacities along the agri-food supply chain to ensure that all stakeholders have the appropriate capabilities and capacities to address the impending and emerging challenges. After all, every chain is as strong as its weakest link. Cybersecurity threat has become a very critical challenge facing all businesses. And the agri-food sector is not immune to the threats it presents. Being prepared is a necessary condition for securing the sector’s future

The use of future Internet technologies in the agriculture and food sectors:integrating the supply chain

The Future Internet is expected to greatly influence how the food and agriculture sector is currently operating. In this paper, we present the specific characteristics of the agri-food sector focusing on how information management in this area will take place under a highly heterogeneous group of actors and services, based on the EU SmartAgriFood project. We also discuss how a new dynamic marketplace will be realized based on the adoption of a number of specialized software modules, called “Generic Enablers” that are currently developed in the context of the EU FI-WARE project. Thus, the paper presents the overall vision for data integration along the supply chain as well as the development and federation of Future Internet services that are expected to revolutionize the agriculture sector

White paper - Agricultural Robotics: The Future of Robotic Agriculture

Agri-Food is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. It supports a food chain that generates over £108bn p.a., with 3.9m employees in a truly international industry and exports £20bn of UK manufactured goods. However, the global food chain is under pressure from population growth, climate change, political pressures affecting migration, population drift from rural to urban regions and the demographics of an aging global population. These challenges are recognised in the UK Industrial Strategy white paper and backed by significant investment via a wave 2 Industrial Challenge Fund Investment (“Transforming Food Production: from Farm to Fork”). RAS and associated digital technologies are now seen as enablers of this critical food chain transformation. To meet these challenges, here we review the state of the art of the application of RAS in Agri-Food production and explore research and innovation needs to ensure novel advanced robotic and autonomous reach their full potential and deliver necessary impacts. The opportunities for RAS range from; the development of field robots that can assist workers by carrying weights and conduct agricultural operations such as crop and animal sensing, weeding and drilling; integration of autonomous system technologies into existing farm operational equipment such as tractors; robotic systems to harvest crops and conduct complex dextrous operations; the use of collaborative and “human in the loop” robotic applications to augment worker productivity and advanced robotic applications, including the use of soft robotics, to drive productivity beyond the farm gate into the factory and retail environment. RAS technology has the potential to transform food production and the UK has the potential to establish global leadership within the domain. However, there are particular barriers to overcome to secure this vision: 1.The UK RAS community with an interest in Agri-Food is small and highly dispersed. There is an urgent need to defragment and then expand the community.2.The UK RAS community has no specific training paths or Centres for Doctoral Training to provide trained human resource capacity within Agri-Food.3.While there has been substantial government investment in translational activities at high Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs), there is insufficient ongoing basic research in Agri-Food RAS at low TRLs to underpin onward innovation delivery for industry.4.There is a concern that RAS for Agri-Food is not realising its full potential, as the projects being commissioned currently are too few and too small-scale. RAS challenges often involve the complex integration of multiple discrete technologies (e.g. navigation, safe operation, multimodal sensing, automated perception, grasping and manipulation, perception). There is a need to further develop these discrete technologies but also to deliver large-scale industrial applications that resolve integration and interoperability issues. The UK community needs to undertake a few well-chosen large-scale and collaborative “moon shot” projects.5.The successful delivery of RAS projects within Agri-Food requires close collaboration between the RAS community and with academic and industry practitioners. For example, the breeding of crops with novel phenotypes, such as fruits which are easy to see and pick by robots, may simplify and accelerate the application of RAS technologies. Therefore, there is an urgent need to seek new ways to create RAS and Agri-Food domain networks that can work collaboratively to address key challenges. This is especially important for Agri-Food since success in the sector requires highly complex cross-disciplinary activity. Furthermore, within UKRI most of the Research Councils (EPSRC, BBSRC, NERC, STFC, ESRC and MRC) and Innovate UK directly fund work in Agri-Food, but as yet there is no coordinated and integrated Agri-Food research policy per se. Our vision is a new generation of smart, flexible, robust, compliant, interconnected robotic systems working seamlessly alongside their human co-workers in farms and food factories. Teams of multi-modal, interoperable robotic systems will self-organise and coordinate their activities with the “human in the loop”. Electric farm and factory robots with interchangeable tools, including low-tillage solutions, novel soft robotic grasping technologies and sensors, will support the sustainable intensification of agriculture, drive manufacturing productivity and underpin future food security. To deliver this vision the research and innovation needs include the development of robust robotic platforms, suited to agricultural environments, and improved capabilities for sensing and perception, planning and coordination, manipulation and grasping, learning and adaptation, interoperability between robots and existing machinery, and human-robot collaboration, including the key issues of safety and user acceptance. Technology adoption is likely to occur in measured steps. Most farmers and food producers will need technologies that can be introduced gradually, alongside and within their existing production systems. Thus, for the foreseeable future, humans and robots will frequently operate collaboratively to perform tasks, and that collaboration must be safe. There will be a transition period in which humans and robots work together as first simple and then more complex parts of work are conducted by robots; driving productivity and enabling human jobs to move up the value chain

Blockchain technology in agri-food value chain management: A synthesis of applications, challenges and future research directions

Agri-food value chain is an area of significant importance because of providing sustainable, affordable, safety and sufficient food, feed, fibre and fuel to consumers, it is critical to ensure these value chains running smoothly and successfully by applying advanced internet technologies. Blockchain technology is a new digital technological approach underpinned by the Industry 4.0 to ensuring data integrity and preventing tampering and single point failure through offering fault-tolerance, immutability, trust, transparency and full traceability of the stored transaction records to all agri-food value chain partners. This paper used systematic literature network analysis to review the state-of-the-art blockchain technology including its recent advances, main applications in agri-food value chain and challenges from a holistic perspective. The findings suggest that blockchain technology together with advanced information and communication technology and internet of things have been adopted for the improvement of agri-food value chain management in four main aspects: traceability, information security, manufacturing and sustainable water management. Six challenges have been identified including storage capacity and scalability, privacy leakage, high cost and regulation problem, throughput and latency issue, and lack of skills. Based on the critical analysis of literature, research gaps and future research directions are proposed in this paper regarding the applications and challenges of blockchain technology in agri-food value chain management. This study makes contributions to the extant literature in the field of agri-food value chain management by discovering the potential of blockchain technology and its implications for agri-food value chain performance improvements such as food safety, food quality and food traceability

The role of digital technologies for the LCA empowerment towards circular economy goals: a scenario analysis for the agri-food system

Purpose This paper aims to develop a scenario analysis on the experts' perceptions of benefits and barriers related to adopting digital technologies for the life cycle assessment (LCA) to catalyse a circular economy transition in the agri-food system. Methods A literature review was performed to identify LCA's digital technologies that can be implemented within the agri-food system. Furthermore, an in-depth interview with a panel of senior researchers was conducted to establish a set of items and assess the perceived benefits and barriers associated with an "empowered LCA", i.e. a future-oriented LCA based on digital technologies. To this end, a two-stage exploratory factor analysis relying on the principal component analysis technique was carried out to refine the set of items. Finally, a covariance-based structural equation model was performed, built on a confirmatory factor analysis, to test the measurement model. Results and discussion The study's findings provide five constructs to explore the potential benefits and barriers related to adopting a digital technologies-based LCA (empowered LCA) for a circular economy transition in the agri-food system. More specifically, the benefits can be assessed using the following constructs: "benefits for the data collection and analysis", "benefits for the LCA analysts", "benefits for the management" and "benefits for traceability". In addition, the barriers have been evaluated using a single construct labelled "general barriers". Conclusions The study highlights the relevance of digital technologies for a circular economy transition to develop a more reliable LCA, enhancing legislative compliance and supporting the traceability processes in the agri-food system. The associated implications for LCA experts, agri-food managers and policymakers are presented. Furthermore, limitations and future research directions are also discussed

Exploring the role of blockchain technology in modern high-value food supply chains: global trends and future research directions

Trust, safety, and quality are among the most important factors in the agri-food supply chains. Traceability is a powerful tool to ensure them, but implementing a transparent and effective system is a complex operation. As a result, innovative systems, like blockchain, could be introduced. Although research on its impacts in the agri-food is recent, the literature appears fragmented. The objective is to investigate the studied aspects of the blockchain adoption in agri-food, with the purpose of retrieving meaningful considerations about the current state of the art about strategic high-value supply chains, such as wine and olive oil, particularly subjected to fraudulent behaviors. A productivity measurement was applied to retrieve the evolution of the number of documents through the years, the most productive countries, the sources, the research areas, and the most significant papers in terms of number of citations received. To understand the research trends, a co-occurrence analysis was employed. Results show that most of the existing studies focus on the role of blockchain in the resolution of some critical issues as food safety and frauds. While wine is currently an emerging sector in which this approach can be implemented, olive oil still needs more attention. In both cases, blockchain could potentially help to support the profitability and sustainability of the production. The research underlines the importance of focusing on the environmental and social dimension of the blockchain phenomenon and the use of technology to improve the efficiency of agri-food chains and reduce waste and resource use

Montana Business Quarterly, Fall 1998

This is an academic publication produced by the Bureau of Business and Economic Research (BBER) at the University of Montana’s College of Business. This is volume 36, number 3.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/mtbusinessquarterly/1155/thumbnail.jp