Promoting agile Supply Chain Management In The Egyptian Agricultural Food Sector: Issues And Guidelines

Abstract

Food and agricultural supply chains represent a high percentage of domestic and global trade. To appraise the development of strategies to improve agricultural global supply chain practices and logistics activities, a better understanding of the challenges in supply chains and opportunities for improvement is required. As a result, by investigating current agricultural supply chain issues, this research aims to promote agile supply chain management in the agricultural sector in order to create a competitive advantage for Egyptian agricultural food products. This would contribute to sustainable practices by leading to higher agricultural productivity, profitability, and customer satisfaction. A systematic review of twenty-three published studies on agile agricultural supply chain management was conducted with the purpose of identifying the main issues of the logistics activities in agricultural food shipments, the methods used in the previous studies, the lessons learned from implementing agile supply chain management in the agricultural food sector, and the previous researchers’ recommendations for the further studies. followed by semi-structured interviews with the Egyptian logistics providers, food importers, exporters, and maritime port authorities to assess the current issues and challenges that are faced by the Egyptian food importers and exporters and recommend solutions and guidelines to create a competitive advantage for the Egyptian agricultural food products. The findings revealed that logistics activities in Egypt need to be operated more efficiently, especially warehousing and transportation operations. Moreover, it provides information that can assist in developing effective strategies to ameliorate the conditions of agricultural stored products in ports and waterways through a roadmap and to identify research gaps and potentials for future research.