Literature Review on Multi-Mode Decision Making in Agricultural Supply Chain

Running head: AGRICULTURAL SUPPLY CHAIN
LITERATURE REVIEW ON MULTI-MODE DECISION MAKING IN AGRICULTURAL
SUPPLY CHAIN
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1AGRICULTURAL SUPPLY CHAIN
Table of Contents
Literature Review............................................................................................................................2
1. Different definitions.................................................................................................................2
2. Importance...............................................................................................................................3
3. Factor’s leading to the Decision factors..................................................................................3
4. How it is apply in Agricultural supply chain...........................................................................3
5. Research of what has been done in term of Agriculture mode. Etc........................................3
6. Developed and Underdeveloped- Identify as Gap...................................................................3
References........................................................................................................................................3

2AGRICULTURAL SUPPLY CHAIN
Literature Review
This section covers a literature review on multi-mode decision making in agricultural
supply chain. The discussion in this sections gets started with definition of important terms that
are commonly used in agricultural supply chain. It follows the factors, which lead to decision
factor. Thereafter, the literature review section thus investigates the application of multi-mode
decision making in agricultural supply chain. It is followed by investigating the research works,
which have been conducted in term of agriculture mode. At the end, the literature review section
identifies the gap.
1. Different definitions
Agro-Ecosystem: Agro-ecosystem, in general, can be referred to the ecosystem surrounding the
lands being used for farming. Farming is an important because it may affect the entire food
industry if not being able to produce the expected quantity of foods. On a different note, a
surplus of production may create enough food resource to local people and wealth to the national
economy by means of imports and exports. Therefore, agro-ecosystem must be maintained to
avoid crops from getting damaged from kinds of natural calamities like flood, or drought
(Pressler et al. 2017).
Agricultural Supply Chain: Supply chain is itself a major topic, which cannot be covered
within just a unit. However, to be very specific, agricultural supply chain can be defined as a
network of operations, which is responsible for carrying foods to its end-users. Farmers play a
significant role in an agricultural supply chain. They are the ones who take care of the farming. If
they are not supplied with adequate resources they won’t be able to justify their farming
capabilities. Moreover, warehouses will not be able to fulfill the demands of food (Tian 2016).

3AGRICULTURAL SUPPLY CHAIN
Multi-mode Decision-Making: In general, this can be defined to be as related with decision-
making for several related works of a supply chain. This goes similar to the agricultural supply
chain. An agricultural supply chain consists of numerous related activities where strategic
decision-making is required. Such decisions may also be related with a scientific understanding
of the issue. Since an agricultural supply chain has an impact of environmental behaviours, and
of farmers’ co-operation, it is actually vulnerable to a number of threats (Lam et al. 2015).
2. Importance
The importance of multi-mode decision making can be traced in challenges that it faces
while not being able to support the range of processes with effective decisions. Effective
decision-making requires strategic thinkers to construct and show ways to implementing it.
However, those strategic thinkers lack an effective co-operation from the stakeholders. The fact
does not just create a communication gap between the thinkers and stakeholders but,
considerably delays or even postpones the implementation process. It, therefore, can be said that
multi-mode decision making is an essential part of the agricultural supply chain, which if not
conducted appropriately, will affect the productivity. Strategies have failed in past such as the
“Contract Farming” (Minot and Sawyer 2016). Hence, this is important that a few challenges of
agricultural supply chain is effectively sorted out by strategic thinkers and the stakeholders.
Multi-mode decision making is required in some issues such as those being discussed in this
section.
Delivery of commodities is one of the issues. Commodities are delivered to warehouses
by various means of transportation such as by truck or train. In most cases, trucks are used to
deliver the food materials to concerned warehouses. The process appears simpler; however, it is
not so. Trucks have to face a range of issues at sites. They are required to be in queues before