Value chain performance improvement for sustainable mango industry development in Pakistan

Abstract

Pakistan is one of the world's leading mango producing and exporting countries. However, Pakistan's mango industry is beset with a number of chain-wide challenges that not only lower the value of mangoes to consumers and reduce the profitability of value chain actors, but also hinder the industry's potential contribution to the country's socio-economic development. As a result, there is now a growing realisation that the mango industry must be developed on a sustainable basis. This coincides with an accelerating drive towards sustainable development of agri-food industries around the world, in order to provide growing populations with adequate supplies of safe and affordable food.Thus, this study aimed to find out how the performance of value chains could be improved in order to bring sustainable development to Pakistan's mango industry. It focused on four issues: 1) consumers' mango value preferences and the implications of these preferences for the industry's development; 2) the structure and performance of the mango industry; 3) constraints on sustainable development of the industry; and 4) measures needed to address consumer, economic, social and environmental issues in the value chains so as to promote industry's sustainable development.A conceptual framework that integrated value chain and triple bottom line (TBL) sustainable development approaches was developed arguing that sustainable development could not be achieved without improving economic, social and environmental performance across entire value chains. A case study methodology was adopted and the case study participants included consumers, value chain actors and public stakeholders in the Pakistani provinces of Punjab and Sindh.To understand mango value preferences, five focus group discussions involving 40 consumers and a survey of 450 consumers was conducted. Thematic content analysis was performed on focus group data whereas descriptive statistics and clusters analysis were employed to analyse survey data. In order to understand the industry's structure, performance and constraints, 150 in-depth interviews were held with value chain actors such as retailers, wholesalers, commission agents, exporters, preharvest contractors, growers and input suppliers and representatives of public stakeholders. Data from the interviews were analysed using thematic content analysis.Consumer data showed the importance of both intrinsic (search and experience) and extrinsic (safety and marketing) quality attributes in mango buying. In-depth analysis of these attributes revealed three consumer segments -mango lovers, value seekers and safety conscious. Mango lovers concentrated primarily on search and experience attributes and safety conscious attached more importance to safety related attributes. Value seekers however considered all attributes important. In general consumers expressed their dissatisfaction with the mango value delivered to them because of use of Calcium III carbide for mango ripening, retailer malpractices and ineffective government regula...

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

“…Obviously, a lack of packaging facilities in the village and union councils, a lack of quality incentives (premium price) for the proper grading of fruit sizes, the perishable nature of the product, a lack of storage infrastructure, and a lack of quality incentive for proper packaging are the most critical citrus marketing constraints. Previous studies on the citrus supply chain also reported similar constraints, which are important in the marketing of citrus and other related fruits [7,11,36]. The Kendall's W value for the ranking of marketing constraints was 0.047, and the significance level is 0.00, which also indicates that a significant degree of agreement exists among all respondents in a particular group regarding the ranking of citrus marketing constraints faced by farmers.…”

“…Thus, the study used a sample size of 300 respondents, including a mix of traditional and modern supply chain participants representing all farm size categories of small, medium, and large farmers. The sample size used for the study is in accordance with the past literature carried out using this type of analysis [7,8,12].…”

“…The main cause of this widespread poverty is the dependence of the country's agriculture on traditional agricultural production systems. However, due to the recognition of the importance of high-value agriculture (HVA), such as animal husbandry and horticultural products, farmers are now shifting from traditional agriculture to agribusiness [6,7]. Therefore, to improve profitability, SSCM of agri-food is now very important.…”

“…The challenge for smallholders is that HVA commodities usually have a high cost of production and there are more risks in production and marketing. To overcome these types of challenges, there should be strong vertical linkages between farmers and other supply chain actors, but in some cases, farmers cannot meet modern food demands [7]. The background and nature of these challenges must be fully understood throughout the production and marketing process of the agri-food industry to develop and implement appropriate solutions for the improvement of SSCM.…”

“…Despite the considerable amount of literature on the downstream levels of agri-food industries for SSCM in Pakistan [7,[22][23][24], no studies have attempted to empirically identify the constraints of the upstream level for SSCM of agri-food industries, especially citrus. The upstream level of the citrus supply chain is of prime importance for two reasons.…”