Australia is recognised globally as a leader in the beef cattle industry. One of the key reasons for its global recognition has been the design, implementation and ongoing improvement of the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) quality assurance scheme which was first trialled in 1998 and celebrated 25 years since commencement in 2023. In this paper the history of the development and implementation of MSA is reviewed, including its alignment with the theoretical principles of the economics of grading and the way in which the initial model has been modified over time. Then, publicly available data is used to estimate the aggregate economic benefits to the industry from its implementation, and these benefits are compared with estimates of the costs incurred in researching, developing and operating the MSA beef grading model. The analysis shows that cattle producers, beef processors and beef consumers have all been beneficiaries of the program through the price premiums available for MSA-graded beef and cattle. Measured at the retail level, annual gross nominal benefits have risen substantially to over $400 million in the four years to 2023-24. The cumulative value to 2023-24 is estimated to be $4,300 million when expressed in real 2023-24 values. In recent years, nominal annual aggregate farm level returns have averaged around $200 million, before increasing markedly in 2022-23 and again in 2023-24. The cumulative value to 2023-24 is estimated to be around $3,030 million when expressed in real 2023-24 values. Over the whole period since implementation, producers have received about 70 per cent of the total available consumer willingness-to-pay when measured on an annual basis. However, theory and empirical evidence suggests that these annual gross benefits are eventually re-distributed to producers, processors, wholesalers, retailers and consumers as the market adjusts over time to the new level of domestic consumer willingness-to-pay for guaranteed tenderness. In the medium to longer term, most of these benefits would end up in the pockets of beef consumers. Impact assessment studies have shown that all past R&D expenditure in MSA has been covered, all industry adoption costs have been covered, all annual operating expenses have been covered and, on top of that, a substantial additional benefit has been generated for the Australian beef cattle industry.

Households are among the greatest contributors to food waste generation, particularly in fresh fruit and vegetables. From a policy perspective, reductions in household food waste are generally perceived to generate positive outcomes; however, the economic impacts are transmitted throughout the food value chain. In this paper, an Equilibrium Displacement Model (EDM) of the Australian apple industry is used to demonstrate the potential changes in economic welfare among apple industry participants from a reduction in household demand for food waste. Overall, there is an industry loss of economic surplus with apple growers, wholesalers, processors, and retailers who are adversely impacted. Domestic consumers potentially gain from increased food security at lower prices; however, the direction and magnitude of the change in consumer welfare are ambiguous and dependent on the treatment of consumer surplus on food waste in economic surplus calculations. This ambiguity likely has implications for current policies to combat food waste. The distributional impacts of changes in economic welfare among industry stakeholders emphasise the need for a collaborative approach to the food waste problem.

In a world impacted by disruptive events, the importance of incorporating resilience into supply chain design has become paramount. Especially, the risks associated with food supply chains can cause severe consequences directly impacting the health and well-being of societies. Though the Australian food supply chains are notably efficient and profitable, they can no longer narrowly focus on the conventional "triangle" of time, cost, and quality. Rather, they need to consider an additional, new triangle of design attributes: resilience, sustainability, and trust to assure food accessibility and availability during unprecedented events. This chapter aims to analyze different types of risks (health, natural disasters, drought, geopolitics, and technology) threatening Australian food commodities (grain, horticulture, dairy, red meat, seafood, and wine) and explore the potential role of digital technologies as enablers of resiliency in food supply chain.

Context Proven strategies to address lamb mortality include pregnancy scanning and the differential management of single- and twin-bearing ewes. However, current adoption rates of this best-practice management by Australian producers remain low at ~20%. Aims We explored producer perceptions about lamb mortality and the adoption of pregnancy scanning, and analysed whether producer characteristics, demographics, beliefs or management practices have an influence on perceptions towards pregnancy scanning or lamb survival. Methods Data were collected through an on-line self-administered survey of lamb producers in New South Wales, Australia. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to summarise the data and test for interdependence of variables. Key results The survey results revealed that New South Wales sheep producers have low participation rates in extension programs and low engagement in record-keeping practices. Only 4% of respondents considered current lamb mortality rates acceptable and the majority agreed that lamb mortality poses a threat to Australia’s sheep industry. Findings identified numerous significant relationships between producer characteristics, demographics, beliefs, management practices, non-participation in extension programs, and perceptions towards pregnancy scanning, lamb mortality and sheep welfare. Survey participants were more likely to have adopted pregnancy scanning if they had participated in extension programs. Conclusions Further extension efforts should be focused on producers who have not adopted any record-keeping practices or previously participated in extension programs. Extension should be tailored to different enterprises, owing to the influence of enterprise focus on beliefs, while also considering producer demographics. Implications A strong case exists for continued investment in future marketing, education, and research, development and extension to increase the capacity of Australia’s sheep industry and, in particular, to increase the adoption of pregnancy scanning.

Genetic information for beef cattle in Australia has been provided through BREEDPLAN since 1972. The BREEDPLAN model estimates the genetic potential of livestock using Estimated Breeding Values. There is substantial evidence proving the accuracy of the latter from programs such as the Angus Sire Benchmarking Program. While BREEDPLAN is well regarded worldwide and is being continually updated and improved, there are substantial differences in the breeding programs of seedstock producers and continuing industry-wide debate about the weight to place on phenotypic and genotypic information when assessing an animal's breeding value. Genetic information available to the industry is considered to be underutilised, leading to lower rates of genetic gain than is technically possible and causing market inefficiency with a reduced incentive to record data. This research is aimed at investigating the influence of genetic and phenotypic information in the selection of Angus bulls and the prices paid for them. In this component of the study, a statistical analysis of bull sale data, it was found that indexes of breeding values were significant variables in explaining some of the difference in prices paid for Angus bulls. However, most of the difference in prices paid for Angus bulls is the result of other factors and is not explained by either measured genetic variables or the phenotypic variables.

The Australian apple industry is one of the nation's largest fruit industries with apples consumed in almost every household. To assist in industry development, levies are paid by producers on processing and fresh apples with funds directed towards research, development and marketing. While specific chain actors contribute to these developments, it is important to identify the beneficiaries to ensure the costs associated with the levies are allocated to those who will benefit. Within a framework depicting the Australian apple value chain, an equilibrium displacement model illustrates the distribution of surplus changes resulting from specified research, development and marketing actions. The distribution of surplus change shares indicates where the costs would be appropriately directed and the total impact to the value chain. It is evident that relatively small changes within the chain have the potential to induce significant increases to the values received by chain participants.

In this paper results are reported of an initial assessment of the prospective economic benefits of a project examining the technical and economic feasibility of the use of new carcase measurement technologies for the Australian beef, sheep meat, and pig meat industries (the ALMTech project). Information provided in a report to Meat and Livestock Australia on their Objective Measurement program (the Revised OM Report) is used as input into recently updated/developed partial equilibrium models of the Australian beef and sheep meat industries to replicate the six value proposition scenarios for the beef and sheep meat industries assessed within that report. The Revised OM Report provides the starting values, and then the formal economic models are used to estimate the magnitude and distribution of gross annual benefits after the market reacts to the new information. Benefits are also estimated for the pig meat industry using a similar modelling framework. Adoption profiles from the Revised OM Report are then used to predict benefits out to 2040, R&D and user costs are estimated, all values are discounted to a common 2020 time period, and NPVs and benefit cost ratios are calculated. The estimated NPV for net benefits was $243 million, while the discounted R&D cost was $127 million. The overall Meat and Livestock Australia OM program was estimated to generate a discounted net benefit of $116 million with an estimated BCR of 1.9:1; for the ALMTech project it was $30 million with the same BCR.

Food loss and waste are of global concern. In developing countries like Mozambique, it seems to be a major issue at the upstream end of supply chains, which is also regarded as postharvest losses (PHL). In this study, PHL is analysed in the context of maize in Mozambique, which is the most important crop in that country. The analysis focuses on empirically testing a simulation modelling approach for determining the short and mid-run economic impacts of PHL. A system dynamics model is applied. This model acknowledges climate, management, and domestic and regional marketing related factors as major drivers of PHL. A novel result from this study suggests climate related factors as the cause of a systematic amount of PHL at about 70,000 tons per year. However, marketing forces also play an important role to explain the overall PHL, particularly in periods domestic production increases sharply. The impact of potential interventions in the value chain are also tested.

Current estimates point to food loss and waste as costing around $US 900 billion dollars a year. That is equivalent to around one-third of global food production. The magnitude of this valuation, however, is reliant on the effective measurement of the actual amount of food loss and waste. There are various definitions of this problem, which differ in their scope. FAO, FUSION and WRI are the most prominent institutions that have proposed different definitions of food loss and waste. All of these definitions have been at least partially criticized. Nonetheless, FAO’s definition and methodology have been the basis for many studies attempting to quantify food loss and waste. FAO’s methodology is based more on estimation rather than direct measurements. Taking the example of maize in Mozambique, using FAO’s methodology to measure food loss and waste at the farm level seems to provide estimates comparable to the available statistics from the national agricultural surveys. Di rect measurements on the other hand, apart from being costly, seem to suffer from representativeness problems as highlighted by some authors. Also, some of the direct measurement methods proposed by some authors seem to look at food loss and waste as a static problem, rather than a dynamic problem that evolves over time. Regardless of the level where the problem of food loss and waste occurs (upper or lower end of supply chains), it results in a deadweight loss for society. That is demonstrated by a Marshallian supply and demand diagram.

Integration of agricultural markets has been a topic of great interest in Mozambique. Numerous studies have been conducted to assess both domestic and regional integration of maize markets in the country, though with some contradictory results. In this study domestic and regional market integration in Mozambique is assessed, focusing on maize markets as the main crop in the country. In contrast to previous work, this study takes into account new investments in infrastructure as well as changes in regional trade policies, using vector autoregressive (VAR) and vector error correction (VEC) models. The main findings suggest that maize markets in Mozambique are not efficiently integrated. This is particularly true between the deficit markets in the South and the surplus markets in the Centre and North of the country. At the regional level, market integration is also inefficient in many cases. Nonetheless, investments in infrastructure, such as the Zambezi River Bridge, linking the north to the rest of the country, as well as changes in trade policies over the years are shown to be significantly impacting to maize price changes, particularly in the north. The overall results suggest there is room for improvements in the maize value chain performance, particularly there is scope for farmers to engage more in trade and for reducing food loss. Action may include investments on training programs and incentives to shift farmers from the current subsistence farming to a more commercial farming system approach.

There is a very large volume of low-value mutton produced in Australia and there have been suggestions that there are value adding opportunities that could improve the returns of sheep meat producers and value chain partners. Dry ageing is one technology being trialled to improve mutton eating quality and so attract premiums from consumer segments with high willingness to pay for guaranteed quality. The objective of this analysis is to estimate the industry-wide benefits of the adoption of dry ageing technology in the Australian mutton market, using assumptions that reflect the most likely ways the technology would be scaled up and most likely supplier and consumer responses in the relevant market segments. A new model of the Australian sheep meat market was used to undertake some scenario analyses about the costs of supplying dry aged mutton ready for delivery to butchers or the hotel, restaurant and institution sector, the size of the target market, and the willingness to pay by consumers for dry aged mutton. While there are already well-established businesses selling aged meat and there may be other small niche markets where the dry aging technology is profitable, the key result is that only under the most optimistic scenario examined would the implementation of dry ageing of mutton lead to positive industry-wide benefits. For our assumed most likely combination of costs and returns, the loss is around $34,000 per year. This loss is doubled in the pessimistic scenario, and in the optimistic scenario the loss turns into a very small positive return of some $3,600 per year. Sheep farmers gain in all scenarios, but these gains are outweighed in many scenarios by losses to value chain partners (processors, retailers and exporters) and consumers in domestic and export markets. Further experimental work which attempts to better quantify the annual operating cost of the proposed large dry ageing cabinets that ensure quality and the minimisation of moisture loss, and the actual willingness of consumers to pay for mutton of different qualities, in a store setting, may alter this conclusion in the future.

Food value chain businesses form alliances with horizontal and/or vertical partners to take collective action to either overcome or ameliorate chain failure, or to take advantage of new opportunities available due to innovations in products or processes. The desired outcomes from the collective action would no t be possible to achieve if these businesses acted independently. While such alliances and collaborations may take many forms, depending on the degree of commitment, the kind of governance and infrastructure linkages, they can often be thought of as “clubs ” for the purpose of economic analysis. Several different types of clubs can be identified, thus the path to collective action chosen by clubs may vary according to existing capabilities and the scope for collaboration, particularly in relation to the potential for value-creating innovation. The result of the collective action is the provision of a chain good or service, which usually leads to greater and more valuable chain coordination. By collectively identifying, funding and acting to capture positive externalities associated with innovation, businesses in many parts of a food value chain can widen opportunities to increase whole-of-chain surplus as well as private profits. In this paper five mini-case studies are presented to demonstrate the breadth of past collective actions undertaken by businesses in food value chains, two in Europe and three in Australia. These are the Euro Pool System, and Global Standards certification in Europe and globally, as well as Meat Standards Australia, an Australian beef organic producer alliance (OBE Organic®), and the supply of food to households during Covid-19 lockdown in Australia. Each case study yields insights into the rationale of how businesses in different food value chains in different countries have acted as a club to use their joint resources to internalise positive innovation and coordination externalities.

Apples are a significant and popular fruit among t e Australian opulation, and in the case of fresh apples, the domestic market is relatively self-sustaining. Retail and consumer preferences are the driving force for quality standards for apples along the chain, with actors working to provide the best quality selection of produce. In order to meet these high standards, loss and waste occurs in the lower grades which are simply a by-product of first grade production. Globally, loss and waste of fresh produce is amongst the highest of all food groups and from the limited data available, apples appear to be no exception. While there is not accurate specific data regarding loss and waste data of fresh apples in the Australian value chain, reporting is increasing as is awareness of the broader issues of food loss and waste. Following along the value chain, there appear to be discrepancies in quantities of fresh apples available at the various stages, with these variations potentially reflective of loss and waste along the chain. Using best estimates from the literature, the total amount of fresh apples, conservatively, that is potentially diverted from the Australian fresh apple supply chain is around 163,000 tonnes which is about 41 per cent of total production at the farm level. What is also lacking from Australian market data and literature, other than robust primary loss and waste data, is the cost of food loss and waste, and the extent of the externalities that occur due to loss and waste along the value chain. Not only do negative externalities incur costs to the broader society, there are additional costs of intervention, and analysis is required to determine the feasibility and appropriateness of intervention strategies.

Concerns over livestock production practices have resulted in increased consumer preferences for certified products. Australian beef buyers’ survey data revealed the preferences of consumers who would buy differentiated beef based on animal welfare, safety, health, or environmental-friendly considerations. Female respondents are more likely to buy certified animal welfare products. Buyers with children, and those who value branded beef, are more likely to buy products differentiated by a bundle of credence attributes. Given that Australian beef consumers eat similar amounts, there are opportunities for differentiating beef products according to credence attributes and offering them in a range of retailers.

Apples are an important and popular fruit among the Australian population and, in the case of fresh apples, the domestic market is relatively self-sufficient. Retail specifications and consumer preferences are the driving force for quality standards for apples along the chain, with actors working to provide the best quality selection of produce. However, the industry is facing many interrelated challenges. These include the growing influence of climate change, the changing nature of consumer preferences, an increasing shortage of labour to undertake orchard operations, and a significant volume of loss and waste. These challenges are discussed in this paper. While all of these challenges are important, it is noteworthy that the total amount of fresh apples that is potentially diverted from the Australian fresh apple supply chain each year is conservatively estimated at 163,000 tonnes, about 40 per cent of total production at the farm level. If this waste is valued at the average farm price, it equates to an industry loss of $245 million annually.

In recent decades both domestic and global agricultural and food value chains have become more private, powerful, self-regulated, closely-coordinated or fully vertically-integrated, and experience-based. Consumers are now wealthier and have expectations that go beyond the traditional provision of goods. They now seek a food "experience" and meeting this demand requires a well-coordinated value chain. However, the provision of a wider range of attributes increases the probability of unpriced spillovers into these chains or into the broader community. How then should all the chain participants be aligned to deliver these food experiences efficiently, to maximise consumers' willingness to pay, and to account for any externalities that may be present? A diagrammatic procedure is used to develop, outline and explain a framework based on value chain failure due to value chain externalities, and how the provision of value chain goods can internalise these externalities.

With increasing population and demand for food, reducing food loss and waste is one of the greatest challenges worldwide. Current estimates point to over 1 billion tons of food lost and wasted worldwide, though nearly 10 percent of the global population is suffering from undernourishment and food insecurity. In Mozambique, about one-quarter of the population suffers from undernourishment and food insecurity. Estimates from FAO point to postharvest losses of maize in Mozambique at about 3.69 to 7.92 percent; this is less than one-fifth of the on-farm losses reported by other authors. In this study, an Equilibrium Displacement model is used to assess the economy-wide impact of postharvest losses of maize at the farm level. The impact of a 3 percent postharvest loss is tested. Results suggest that even this very conservative percentage of postharvest losses has a direct annual net cost of around $USD 28 million for both farmers and consumers domestically. This is equivalent to over 1 percent of the national budget. It is also higher than the average cost of food aid programs received over the last three years. Therefore, reducing postharvest losses of maize along with other interventions is crucial to achieve sustainable development and economic growth.

Large-scale industry investment in quality assurance and marketing campaigns for Australian lamb make both Meat Standards Australia (MSA) sheep meat and lamb advertising campaigns modern and plausible determinants of Australian consumer demand for lamb. Incorporating non-discretionary demand shift variables such as these into the General Almost Ideal Demand System (GAIDS) model may provide a suitable method to test for their impact on Australian lamb consumption patterns. This paper extends on a recent application of the GAIDS to Australian meat data by incorporating two alternative and novel methods of demand-shift index construction. It also proposes a semi-formalised approach to GAIDS model development and specification when dealing with underlying data quality issues.

Empirical studies of customers' response to their favored brands' being out of stock (OOS) have focused on customers' characteristics and have been almost exclusively conducted in metropolitan areas of Europe and North America. Less is known about the effect of new retail market entry on customers' OOS response and the associated implications for retailers and manufacturers in the context of small regional centers and cities. This paper investigates customers' response to OOS in the context of a small Australian city experiencing market entry by a new supermarket. A Multinomial Logit model is used to analyze the primary survey data from 378 food shoppers. Prices for a selection of food items were also tracked for the relevant period. Our results show that changing competitive environment is likely to be a driver of customers’ switching store in response to OOS. Overall, most of the influential variables are positively associated with switching stores rather than switching brands, and this indicates that OOS is more costly for retailers than for manufacturers.