Willingness of beef finishers to participate in supply chain collaborations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that influence beef farmers’ willingness to participate in supply chain collaboration initiatives and to identify attributes in formal and non-formal agreements that would encourage or discourage participation.

A face-to-face survey containing a choice experiment was carried out. Respondents were selected using stratified sampling among beef finishers in Northern Ireland. Logistic regressions were employed to examine the factors associated with willingness and agreement attributes.

Larger and more specialised farms, as well as farmers with higher education attainment are shown to be more likely to participate in collaboration arrangements with downstream buyers. The choice experiment results suggest that farmers are in general willing to fulfil some feeding requirements in order to earn a premium, while a minimum price guarantee is not attractive. The positive valuation of data sharing between farms and abattoirs is found specifically among farmers with higher qualifications. Although education is shown to have positive impacts on both participation in collaboration agreements and the valuation of contract attributes, the level of education associated with the positive impacts differ. In addition, farmers who have enroled in agri-environmental schemes view the requirement of a written contract more favourably than those who have not.

The study adds to the understanding of how beef farmers view participation within supply chain collaborations and also how the potential features of the collaboration relate to characteristics of farmers and their farms.