Investigating the Challenges of Chicken Meat Supply Chain Using a System Thinking Approach

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Associate professor of Agricultural economics at University of Kurdistan

2 PhD at agricultural economics. Dept of agricultural economics. lecturer

Abstract

In recent months, the price of chicken meat has risen sharply, endangering the welfare of consumers; On the other hand, rising input prices have created several problems for producers. Given the problems that exist along the supply chain of this product and due to the large number of activities and agents involved in this chain; In this study, a system thinking approach has been used to investigate the challenges of the chicken meat supply chain.Two types of complexity, including combinatorial complexity and dynamic complexity can occur in systems such as the supply chain of the agricultural products. Combinatorial complexity is due to the presence of different elements or actors in the system; while dynamic complexity can occur even in the simple systems due to the interactions between agents over time (Sterman, 2000). Van Mai (2010) believes that system thinking is a appropriate approach for analyzing complex systems and identifying leverage points for intervention because it can investigate the interrelationships among several subsystems. Therefore, in this study, it was used system thinking approach to investigate interrelationships among agents of chicken supply chain actors in Iran.In this study, the relationships between chain agents were extracted in the causal loop diagram and then, the system archetypes were identified. The causal loop diagram includes 6 reinforcing loops and 14 balancing loops. Identified archetypes also includes balancing process with delay, fixes that fail, shifting the burden and escalation.
Fixes that fail and shifting the burden archetypes showed that the livestock input import policy has not been helpful to regulate the domestic market. It has only made the system accustomed to supply the needed livestock input through imports and abandoned basic solutions. In addition, the corn and soybean meal import policy has not been effective in decreasing corn price and soybean meal price, because of the lack of monitoring on imported corn and soybean meal distribution.

Keywords

References

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Agricultural Economics
Volume 15, Issue 3 - Serial Number 3
December 2021
Pages 121-143

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