Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Agrarian crises and producerist populism in French rural unions: limits and potential for an emancipatory rural politics

The article examines the reactions of two important agricultural trade unions in France, the ?Confédération Paysanne and the Coordination Rurale, to the liberalisation and financialisation of the ?European Common Agricultural Policy. It highlights the adoption of a "producerist populism" approach ?focused on the role of transnational economic and financial elites in co-opting the state, reducing ?public aid and as the main driver of the economic crises experienced by French farmers. The article ?traces the manifestations of this approach in the claims and analyses of the two unions in the face of ?recent economic developments in the wheat and dairy sectors in France. It argues that the producerist understanding of the crises in agriculture leads these two farmers unions, from opposite political backgrounds, to develop common arguments, opening to strategic alliances. Finally, based on the current ?debate on authoritarian populism in rural areas, the article discusses the interest in overcoming these ?narratives in favour of a more emancipatory rural perspective.? L’articolo esamina le reazioni alla liberalizzazione e alla finanziarizzazione della Politica Agricola Comune europea da parte di due importanti sindacati agricoli in Francia, la Confédération Paysanne e la Coordination Rurale. Evidenzia l’adozione di un populismo "producerista" incentrato sul ruolo delle élite economiche e finanziarie transnazionali nella cooptazione dello Stato, nella riduzione degli aiuti pubblici e quale principale motore delle crisi economiche vissute dagli agricoltori francesi. L’articolo rintraccia le manifestazioni di questo approccio nelle rivendicazioni e nelle analisi dei due sindacati di fronte ai recenti sviluppi economici nei settori del grano e del latte in Francia. Sostiene che la comprensione producerista delle crisi in agricoltura permette alle due organizzazioni sindacali, provenienti da poli politici opposti, di sviluppare argomenti comuni, aprendo anche ad alleanze strategiche. Sulla base dell’attuale dibattito sul populismo autoritario nelle aree rurali, l’articolo discute quindi l’interesse di superare queste narrazioni a favore di una prospettiva rurale più emancipatoria

Assessment of CAP strategic plans and specific EU regulations, with suggestions for improvement: National Report - France

The case of the French national strategic plan is a policy proposal which is considered to be rather “conservative” by most commentators in France. France has not capped allocation amounts at all and, keeping its allocation of subsidies close to the distribution decided in the 1992 CAP reform (more favourable to cereal-producing areas in particular), has only slightly made the level of aid per hectare converge among the different regions. Our report shows that French definitions of active, new and young farmers meet the UE definitions, and they are more precise concerning skills, training and professional experiences of farmers. But the EU and the French definitions are not helping to highlight new situations concerning the complexity of new farm projects and have no environmental criteria for promoting sustainable agriculture. The SWOT analysis shows interesting points on strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, but suffers from several contradictions, some strengths being also considered as weaknesses and some threats not being considered enough. More generally, the EU framework and the French strategic plan are very large, without a clear vision on the kind of agriculture the EU wants to promote and the EU Indicators are not efficient enough to evaluate the farmers' generational renewal, which should become a clearer objective. The financial analysis of SO7 also shows that the issues of farm setting-up and farm succession as it is currently framed strongly rely on two main measures: support for setting-up in agriculture and complementary income support for young farmers. These two measures are not adapted to the variety of projects that could allow ensuring generational renewal and the ecological transition and do not address the complexity of the different issues mentioned in the SWOT analysis. The stakeholders meeting highlighted 3 axes of recommendations: recommendations on SO7, in connection with the more general framework of the CAP; the potential improvement of consultation processes and policy implementation; the articulation among different scales and the creation of a more functional governance

Le pas-de-porte en agriculture, marqueur de la dérégulation foncière et de la financiarisation des exploitations

Since 1946 and the integration of land lease in the French rural law, the « pas-de-porte », which consists in paying an entrance fee in order to access to land rent to the previous farmer, and eventually to the land owner, became illegal. Economic approaches show how this custom derives from a tension between familial logics and entrepreneurial logics inherent to the French agricultural politic and to farms’ management. We lack empirical studies though, that allow understanding the power relations at stake and the way this illegal fee is integrated in the accountability of farms, in order to consider regulation matters. This article aims to fill this gap. First, it presents the historical roots of this « pas-de-porte » and the transformation of its economic meaning within a more and more capitalistic context. Second, it describes the three-party relations that takes place between the landowner, the former and the new tenants ; it also analyses the role of middlemen such as « experts agricoles » and management consultants in the calculation of the value of the transaction and its integration in the accountability of the farms. Finally, the article shows how the evolution of the legal status towards corporations accounts for a more general evolution of financialisation of farms within which the pas-de-porte has greater value and is harder to regulate. The recent evolutions of the land policy reveal how hard it becomes to frame this financialisation movement.Le pas-de-porte est une pratique sanctionnée par le droit rural depuis 1946 qui consiste pour le locataire d’une terre agricole à payer un droit d’entrée au locataire sortant et éventuellement au propriétaire de la terre. Si des travaux d’économistes montrent en quoi cette pratique traduit l’existence d’une tension entre logique familiale et logique entrepreneuriale dans la politique agricole française et la gestion des exploitations agricoles, il manque des études empiriques qui mettent en évidence les modalités concrètes de son inscription dans l’économie des exploitations agricoles ainsi que les rapports de force qu’elle charrie afin d’en penser les formes de régulation possibles. C’est l’objet de cet article. Dans un premier temps, il présente les racines historiques de cette pratique et la transformation de sa signification dans le cadre d’une économie agricole de plus en plus capitalistique. Dans un second temps, il décrit la relation tripartite entre locataires entrant et sortant et propriétaire, puis analyse le rôle des acteurs intermédiaires des transactions foncières tels que les conseillers de gestion et les experts agricoles dans le calcul de la valeur du pas-de-porte et dans son intégration à la comptabilité des exploitations. Finalement, l’article montre que l’évolution des statuts juridiques vers des formes sociétaires traduit un mouvement de financiarisation des exploitations, au sein duquel le pas-de-porte est mieux valorisé et plus difficile à réguler. Les récentes évolutions de la politique des structures révèlent la difficulté du législateur à encadrer le mouvement de financiarisation à l’œuvre

Responding to change: Farming system resilience in a liberalized and volatile European dairy market

For more than two decades market conditions for European producers have changed significantly due to liberalization and increasing price volatility. The objective of this article is to analyze how farming systems in five European countries (Denmark, Greece, France, Latvia, and the United Kingdom) have reacted to the emerging instability of the milk market. Dairy production is an ideal setting to study how different farming systems respond to changing conditions as a number of policy changes have altered market conditions for producers. Empirically, the analysis draws on statistical data on dairy production and farm structure, and qualitative and quantitative data from case studies in the five countries. During the period under study, dairy farming systems have operated under the same overarching EU regulation, but dairy sectors at the national level followed specific pathways. We found different strategies and institutional arrangements deployed to address price volatility at the national levels. We argue that divergence in the strategies developed to address this disturbance reflects different configurations of value chain organization (particularly dairies), production factors (production facilities and biophysical conditions), and market orientation. Increasing market volatility implies that succession planning and attracting investments is difficult for farming systems across all countries, and thereby to formulate strategies for resilience

Report on Information and Material Flow - Analysis for the selected case studies

The overall objective of the VALUMICS project is to produce a comprehensive suite of approaches and tools that will enable decision makers to evaluate the impact of strategic and operational policies on resilience, integrity and sustainability of European food value chains. GOALS This report presents the results from Task 4.4 - information and material flow analysis. The objective of Task 4.4 is to analyse the information and material flows in the selected case studies and to study their impact on supply chain decision making. METHODS The research draws on existing literature and national statistics for the material flow analysis. Sankey diagrams are used to represent the material flows. Several stakeholder interviews were conducted for understand the decision-making mechanisms in the Norwegian farmed salmon and Czech wheat case studies. MAIN OUTCOMES This deliverable provides the methodological approach for conducting the material and information flow analysis for different case studies selected in VALUMICS. Material flow analyses from nine case studies from the five European food value chains are presented: Farmed salmon to fillet (Norway), Cattle to beef (UK, Germany), Dairy (France, Germany, UK), Wheat to bread (France, Czech Republic), Tomato to processed tomato (North Italy). Material flows for the tomato case study are reported by market channels while for other case studies, the material flows are reported focussing on the entire value chain from production to distribution stages. Information needs connected to supply chains decision mechanisms are presented for two case studies: Farmed salmon (Norway) and Wheat (Czech Republic) which are used as an example to illustrate the methodological approach in alignment with WP5 (Task 5.2) and WP7 (Task 7.2 - Agent Based Modelling). NEXT STEPS The decision mechanisms for different value chain agents will be further developed in Task 5.2 and WP7 – Agent Based Modelling. The material flows will form an input to Task 4.6 – Risk and resilience assessment and to the scenario development in WP8.Thakur, M., Johansen, U., Jafarzadeh, S., Čechura, L., Rumankova, L., Kroupova, Z. Z., Jaghdani, T.J., Loveluck, W., Mehta, S., Aditjandra, P., Gresham, J., Esposito, G., Samoggia, A.,  lafsd ttir, G., Gudbrandsdottir, I., Schan, C. S., Sj berg, I., Richardsen, R., Haug, K. (2020). Report on Information and Material Flow Analysis for the selected case studies. The VALUMICS project funded by EU Horizon 2020 G.A. No 727243. Deliverable: D4.3, SINTEF Ocean, Trondheim, 70 pages. DOI 10.5281/zenodo.510584

Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato

Sexuality-related work discrimination and its association with the health of sexual minority emerging and young adult men in the Detroit Metro Area

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106620/1/Sexuality-related work discrimination and its association with the health of sexual minority emerging and young adult men in the Detroit Metro Area.pd