Evaluating agricultural food supply chain resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

With the spread of the global COVID-19 pandemic, agricultural food supply chains (AFSC) have suffered from unprecedented challenges and disruption. AFSC must possess extremely high levels of resilience when confronted by the pandemic. In this study, we have identified six important resilience criteria and eighteen sub-criteria of AFSC in the context of the COVID-19. The research presents the conceptual mixed multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technology to prioritize the resilience criteria based on understanding their interrelationships. Results identify three essential resilience criteria, namely “coordination and collaboration in the supply chain”, “efficiency”, and “strategic management” and the top five key sub-criteria as “velocity”, “visibility”, “continuity management”, “connectedness”, “collaborative planning and replenishment”. The framework proposed in this study contributes to the interdisciplinary understanding towards building resilience within AFSC, and has the potential to be extended to other types of supply chains in response to COVID-19.