Nowadays, global challenges linked to agriculture and food systems, including environment, climate, biodiversity, poverty and social justice, are broadly discussed and underlined in the strategic documents related to the production and trade with agricultural commodities such as the Berlin Declaration, OECD-FAO Guidance for Responsible Agricultural Supply Chains, UNDP's Green Commodities Programme, EU Policy of Due Diligence for Supply Chains and European Green Deal strategy.
Following on from these selected current topics, the key aspects of the course are focused on the agricultural value chains and their capacity of: (i) increasing competitiveness of markets to benefit producers and consumers, (ii) offering greater income opportunities by integrating small-scale producers into upgraded value chains, (iii) promoting consumer confidence and consumer behaviour towards food, nutrition, retailing and markets and (iv) strengthening diversity of production systems at local and regional level. Cross-cutting issues such as environment, gender, youth employment and increasing resilience to stressors (such as the global COVID-19 pandemic) will also be included
The course is structured into six hours of theoretical lectures, six hours of seminars (students will be able to interact with the lecturer and other classmates of the subject) and self-study of relevant literature and seminar work/case study of value chain in selected country (including research design, methodology, data collection, data analysis and writing the seminar work).
Lectures:
- Global agricultural value chains and current international attempts of their reforms
- Value chain analysis – methodological approaches
- Agri-food value chain development focusing on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
- Consumer confidence and consumer behaviour towards sustainable food
- Fair trade and private ethical certifications as tools for inclusive and sustainable supply chains
- Horizontal integration and collective actions in the value chains’ and farming systems’ development
Seminars:
- Case study reading and discussion
- Practical example of analysis of the value chain
- Design of the questionnaire and data collection tools
- Problem of collective actions in the value chain development - interactive educational online game and discussion
- Case study reading and discussion. Online collaboration in the group
