Abstract
The poultry sector worldwide is considered as one of the most important commodities within the agricultural sector. The poultry sector is important for any country’s eco-nomic growth, health, and welfare. Most developed and developing countries attest to the importance of the poultry sector, specifically for the production of poultry chickens and eggs. The majority of poultry producers are small-scale farmers, especially in emerging economies.
The majority small scale poultry farmers and producers, especially in developing coun-tries, experience several challenges, which are also affected by sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). Most of the poultry producers who are operating from their homes and on a small scale experience challenges such as high input costs, the spread of poultry diseases, and the lack of a secure market, to name a few. Specifi-cally, in South Africa, there are two types of poultry producers, namely, small-scale poultry producers (SSPPs) and commercial poultry producers (CPPs). These two types of farmers are competing in the market with international poultry traders (IPTs) from Brazil, the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), which are importing chickens into the South African market.
The production input is the biggest obstacle that is facing both the SSPP and CPP, because for most of their poultry inputs, these producers rely on the supplies of the IPTs. Nevertheless, the CPP is in a much better position than the SSPP. CPPs within the South African and some of the Southern African markets are well vertically inte-grated. The CPP sector in South Africa owns the four factors of production, i.e., labour, entrepreneurship, capital, and production. In contrast, the SSPP businesses are not vertically integrated.
Both the SSPP and CPP are disadvantaged by the IPTs, which sell chickens at a price that both the SSPP and the CPP cannot compete on. The IPTs are advantaged by not having to pay for expensive poultry inputs such as the soya bean and canola, and by import quotas that are set up in their favour. In addition, unlike South African poultry producers, they are not mandated to tackle any socio-economic challenges that are faced by South Africans.
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The study's main purpose was to embed the SSPPs into the existing SSCM frame-work, by ensuring the inclusion of all the players that influence the operation of the SSPP in South Africa. As vertical integration was considered the main factor in the development of SSPP, the study’s objectives were aimed at investigating the gaps and opportunities in the sector related to forward and backward integration and how the three sustainable factors (economic, social and environmental) are connected to the vertical integration of the South African poultry sector, particularly for SSPPs.
The study reviewed the literature on poultry sectors worldwide, then in developing countries and lastly in South Africa. This was to obtain a picture of the current affairs of the sector and understand what other worlds players are doing as compared to the developing world and particularly South Africa. This study mainly concentrated on the two main topics of the SSCM and SSPP, focusing on the elements of each topic. The SSCM elements investigated were the three factors of sustainability – economic, so-cial and environmental – and supply chain management (SCM). The elements of SSPP explored were vertical integration (backward and forward integration) and re-verse logistics. The study looked at how the SSCM elements can help make sure that SSPP can support initiatives for vertical integration and get rid of problems in the poul-try industry that are stopping the SSPP from moving forward.
To achieve SSCM, traceability and transparency came out very strongly as the drivers for understanding the local and global supply-chain network within the poultry sector. For an industry to be transparent and for the product to be traceable, blockchain tech-nology was found to be the best tool for the job. A model of SSCM for SSPP in South Africa was proposed, which extended the existing framework of SSCM to include blockchain technology. The South African poultry industry is impacted by the local and global supply chains, which are working in isolation. There are mainly three different actors competing for the same limited market. The study identified which actors are beneficial to South Africans and which are not, and how these actors can be integrated to ensure that they are all in a supply-chain network that is beneficial to South Africans and plays a role in enhancing the SSPP. The three actors identified are global poultry producers (Brazil, the EU and the US), (CPPs) and the SSPP.
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The study embraced the critical realism philosophy to guide its methodological ap-proach, with the aim of the research method being to investigate the causal mecha-nism leading to the slower progression of South African SSPPs. This research ap-proach was adopted with the intention of finding out what the truth is beyond what people can see. The study used the reproductive and abductive research methods to identify the cause-and-effect relationship. Deductive or inductive methods were not adopted because each would have limited the research to only one of two things: a review of the existing frameworks or the creation of a framework for SSPP in South Africa.
In order to find out what is reality, the study reviewed at a range of documents and articles from different institutions and organisations. The document review was con-ducted on 249 documents that included case studies, institution research articles, as-sociation reports, government reports, online magazines and Twitter threads. All the documents had some relevance to topics associated with the South African poultry industry and the SSPP.
The archival research method was used for the study, and bibliometric and content analysis were used to examine the research. Three analytical research tools were used: VOSviewer, Atlas.ti and Python NLTK. For the bibliometric analysis, VOSviewer was used to analyse the data; this did not use the 249 documents retrieved as the study sample, but rather academic articles from the Web of Science database. It com-pared academic research articles from around the world with those from South Africa. Content analysis was used to analyse the 249 documents using Atlas.ti and Python.
Within the three factors of sustainability, social factor is a gap in a literature as pointed out by several SSCM researchers, this study went in depth to reveal the causes of neglection of the social factor by researchers and industries, contributing to the body of knowledge of SSCM. Research focused on ensuring that the three sustainability factors are integrated through incorporation of SCM activities and processes, and the significance of incorporating the institutional factor when dealing with developing econ-omies. In contrast to the economic factor and the environmental factor, the social fac-tor is most often omitted. The neglect of the social factor is the result of the lack of
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rigorous research on the social factor's elements. This means that, even though most researchers acknowledge the existence of the three factors of SSCM, they lack the elements for each factor to achieve true SSCM initiatives and implementation. When it comes to the social factor, it is important to remember that the customers, employ-ees, community, and shareholders are the most important people. Practitioners and researchers would not forget any of the three SSCM factors (economic, social, and environmental if they were able to put these four stakeholder groups together.
The study found out that when integrating the three factors of SSCM it should be con-currently with consideration of SCM activities and processes. The SSCM factors, needs to be considered in every activity and process of SCM, and in most cases en-forced by government or institutional factor. The institutional factor becomes the fourth factor to be added to three SSCM factors, especially in emerging economies, it plays a crucial role, for betterment implementation of SSCM in different sectors. For SSCM to can work in the developing world, the researchers and practitioners of the focal company must understand how the developing world is governed and what its policies are. Regarding institutional factor, there are several challenges when it comes to pol-icies and regulations, so it is important also to acknowledge that developed countries are far ahead and that the IPTs can work hand in hand with the local stakeholders to implement beneficial SSCM within the supply-chain communities.