Agribusiness as an economic category corresponds to the concept of the “food economy”. Poland is the sixth-largest food producer in the European Union, and the gross value added generated by Polish agribusiness accounts for approximately 4% of its value in the national economy and about 6% of GDP.
As a sector of the national economy, agribusiness consists of three basic elements:
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supplying farms and processing enterprises with raw materials, means of production, and services,
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agriculture, where agricultural products and services are created,
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processing of agricultural raw materials into products, as well as storage and distribution of food.
Agribusiness therefore includes all those entities that participate in the production of food and its delivery to the consumer. At the beginning of the 1990s, significant and profound changes took place in agribusiness related to the introduction of a market economy and privatization. These changes initiated processes of restructuring and consolidation of agri-food processing enterprises, which proceeded at different rates depending on the industry. Despite significant transformations, the Polish agri-food sector faces further challenges. Accession to the European Union means, on the one hand, access to the single European market, and on the other, exposure to Western competition. The leveling of agricultural raw material prices within the enlarged EU creates strong pressure to improve the competitiveness of Polish agribusiness.
A significant factor in improving the competitiveness and efficiency of agribusiness can be logistics, understood as the management of activities related to the movement and storage of goods, which are intended to enable the flow of products from places of origin to places of consumption, as well as the management of information related to products.
Until now, logistics was mainly of interest to trading companies, service providers, or international corporations, which was also reflected in numerous scientific and popular science publications in this field. Interest in logistics in agribusiness enterprises was often low, and also relatively little exposed in the literature. However, in recent years, managers of agribusiness enterprises have been increasingly looking for opportunities and ways to improve material and information flows. It seems, therefore, that many new and important challenges in this area are emerging for both the community of practitioners and scientists.
The role of logistics in agribusiness is particularly important due to the specificity of this sector, manifested, among other things, by:
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significant temporal imbalance between supply and demand for agricultural products (this applies especially to plant production, including industries such as grain processing and fruit and vegetable processing),
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low transport and storage susceptibility of many agricultural products (e.g., milk, meat, fruits, and vegetables),
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numerous and independent intermediate links in the entire supply chain “from the farmer’s field to the consumer’s table”, which causes strong exposure to disruptions in the flow of information and, consequently, excessive inventories accumulating up the supply chain – in accordance with the mechanism described as the “bullwhip effect” by Forrester.
Proper organization of logistics processes, taking into account the specificity of the agribusiness sector, can certainly increase the competitiveness of Polish agribusiness enterprises, both through cost optimization and by offering customers a higher level of delivery service.
Agrologistics can be defined as an activity involving the organization, planning, control, and implementation of the flow of agri-food goods from the place of production of agricultural raw materials, through channels related to their procurement, storage, production, and distribution, to the final recipient (food consumer), the goal of which is to satisfy market requirements while maintaining food safety, minimal costs, and minimal capital commitment.
However, excellent logistics in a single agribusiness enterprise is not enough to significantly improve international competitiveness. Today, a key aspect is effective cooperation and its continuous improvement in all links of the agribusiness supply chain. The chance for the expansion of Polish agri-food products on EU markets depends on the flexible adaptation of entire agro-logistics chains to changing environmental conditions and the use of the latest systems, i.e., CRM (Customer Relationship Management), SCM (Supply Chain Management), or eBusiness.
The article comes from the journal “Logistyka” 3/2011.