The traditional supply chain for agriculture has been comprised of a series of commodities loosely linked together by open markets.  However, as a portion of agriculture moves away from commodities to agricultural products with specific attributes, the need for integrated and coordinated supply chains increases substantially.

For more information on this topic, see the links listed below of articles posted on related Web sites.

Supply Chains

• Identity Preservation of Agricultural Commodities – University of California.
  
• How Your Employees and Customers Drive a New Value Profit Chain – HBS Working Knowledge -- Thinking of your customers and employees as key creators of value can produce profitable results.
  
• Profit from Customer Operating Partnerships – HBS Working Knowledge -- Need to increase profits? Consider creating "customer operating partnerships" that involve tightly linked extended supply chains. The payoff? Start with share increases even in your most profitable accounts.
  
• Moving from Supply Chains to Supply Networks – HBS Working Knowledge -- Dramatic change is taking place in today's supply chain and it's up to the general manager to assemble a team that can implement the new principles and practices the change requires.
  
• What Drives Supply Chain Behavior? – HBS Working Knowledge -- Surprise: Managers are not always rational decision makers.  How human behavior affects supply chain coordination.
  
• Supply Chain Management in a Wal-Mart World – HBS Working Knowledge -- The Wal-Mart supply chain management structure is not one size fits all. How do you keep everyone else happy? Apply service differentiation to your strategic accounts.
  
• Adapt Your Supply Chain—or Die – HBS Working Knowledge -- Unless companies adapt their supply chains, they won’t stay competitive for very long. The secrets: trend spotting and supplier change.
  
• The Missing Link in Supply Chains: People – HBS Working Knowledge -- The processes and technologies seem to be in place to deliver smart supply chain management. But we aren’t there yet. A roundtable discussion on the people problem.
  
• Supply Chain Risk: Deal With It – HBS Working Knowledge -- Suddenly your supply chain is full of weak links, everything from terrorism to political instability to dock strikes. Could you and your customers withstand a disruption?
  
• Yanking Your Supply Chain: Is There Still Too Much Slack? – HBS Working Knowledge -- Yes, many companies have effective supply-chain management programs, but there is still a long way to go to ensure that relationships with vendors operate at peak efficiency, say experts.
  
• Supply Chain Management – BetterManagement.com – A series of articles on supply chains.

Vertical Integration

• Going Downstream After Manufacturing Profit – HBS Working Knowledge -- As business value flowed steadily downstream in the 1990s, from producing goods to servicing them, most manufacturers struggled, unable to boost their profits or stock prices. But a few thrived, going beyond the company gates to compete in downstream markets - where the money is.