Critical Issues at the Upstream Level in Sustainable Supply Chain Management of Agri-Food Industries: Evidence from Pakistan’s Citrus Industry

Muhammad Naseer (), Muhammad Ashfaq, Sarfraz Hassan, Azhar Abbas, Amar Razzaq, Mubashir Mehdi, Anoma Ariyawardana and Mumtaz Anwar
Additional contact information
Muhammad Ashfaq: Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab 38040, Pakistan
Sarfraz Hassan: Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab 38040, Pakistan
Azhar Abbas: Institute of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab 38040, Pakistan
Amar Razzaq: College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, No. 1, Shizishan Street, Hongshan District, Wuhan 430070, China
Mubashir Mehdi: Institute of Business Management Sciences, University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Punjab 38040, Pakistan
Anoma Ariyawardana: School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, The University of Queensland, Gatton 4343, Australia

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-19

Abstract: Sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) has recently received increasing attention from researchers and the business community. Due to globalization and changing consumption patterns, agri-food industries have undergone a transformation, and the sustainability of agri-food supply chains has also received greater attention. However, the issues of SSCM at the upstream level of the supply chain in agri-food industries have not been adequately empirically studied. This paper aims to list key issues or constraints in the production and marketing through farmers’ group discussions, supplemented by the literature, and empirically identifies key constraints to SSCM of the citrus industry in Pakistan. The paper used cross-sectional data from 300 farmers involved in the production and marketing of citrus in Punjab, Pakistan. Farmers were asked to answer on a Likert scale data about potential constraints identified from the literature and farmers’ group discussions. Kendell’s coefficient of concordance and the mean ranking technique was used to rank and to identify the critical constraints in the production and marketing of citrus. In addition, factor analysis (principal component analysis) was used for the grouping of these constraints. In production constraints, factors, such as fertilizer, pesticide, and seed quality, climate change, high production cost, and agricultural labor performance, are important. These constraints are aligned with some key marketing factors, such as packaging, grading, and storage facilities. The findings convey messages for policymakers to solve these issues and challenges at the upstream level of the SSCM chain in the citrus and related agri-food industries.

Keywords: agri-food supply chains; critical issues; sustainability; citrus production; marketing; Pakistan (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1326/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1326/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:5:p:1326-:d:210562

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().