How resilience innovations in food supply chains are revolutionizing logistics, wholesale trade, and farm services in developing countries

Developing country food supply chains have been pummeled by a series (and often a confluence) of shocks over the past several decades, including the Russia-Ukraine war, COVID-19, climate shocks from hurricanes to floods to droughts, animal and plant diseases, an intensification of road banditry and local conflicts, and overlaying all these, deep transformation in markets themselves with new requirements for quality and food safety. Yet supply chains have been largely resilient, adapting and bouncing back in surprising ways. We show that this has often involves deep ‘pivoting’ by one segment or one value chain, and ‘co-pivoting’ by another to facilitate the former’s pivot. We present a conceptual framework and then illustrate with a variety of examples from Africa and Asia, such as pivoting toward e-commerce by Asian retailers and co-pivoting by delivery intermediaries; pivoting toward quality horticultural production by African and Asian farmers and co-pivoting by mobile outsource services for farming and marketing; and building of redundant ports to protect rice milling operations from climate shocks in Asia by agribusiness and logistic firms. The paper provides implications for policy to facilitate these adaptions and for resilience strategies of agribusiness firms.

过去几十年间，发展中国家的食品供应链遭受了一系列（且往往是同时发生的）冲击，包括俄乌冲突、新冠疫情、从飓风、洪水到干旱等气候冲击、动植物疫病、公路抢劫与地方冲突的加剧，而在所有这些之上的是市场自身的深刻变革，以及对质量和食品安全的新要求。然而，供应链在很大程度上展现出韧性，以令人惊讶的方式适应并恢复。我们发现，这通常涉及某一环节或某一价值链的深度‘转型（pivoting）’，以及另一环节或价值链的‘协同转型（co-pivoting）’，以促进前者的转型。我们提出一个概念框架，随后通过非洲和亚洲的多个案例加以阐释，例如亚洲零售商向电子商务转型，配送中介协同转型；非洲和亚洲农民向优质园艺产品生产转型，农业和营销领域的移动外包服务协同转型；以及亚洲农业综合企业和物流公司建设冗余港口，以保护碾米业务免受气候冲击。本文为促进这些适应措施的政策以及农业综合企业的韧性战略提供了启示。