Tag: challenges

This paper examines the evolution of China’s agri-food trade over the past two decades amid increasing global uncertainty. Using a combination of quantitative trade data and qualitative policy analysis from 2000 to 2023, it explores how China has navigated crises such as the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and geopolitical tensions. The findings highlight that China’s agri-food trade growth has been driven by trade liberalisation, domestic support policies, and a strategic focus on diversification and food security. However, challenges remain, including heavy import dependence, rising production costs, and environmental pressures. The study concludes that strengthening domestic capacity, investing in green innovation, and expanding trade partnerships are critical for long-term food system stability. These insights offer valuable lessons for other agricultural economies striving for greater resilience in a volatile global environment.

Agriculture is a leading sector in the Ukrainian economy, providing a significant share of export revenues and guaranteeing the food security of other countries. However, the war with Russia has profoundly challenged the sector, which now faces the following problems: insufficient financial resources to ensure the production of agricultural products; reduced fertiliser use; crisis in animal husbandry sectors; labour shortage; destruction of the infrastructure for production, processing and storage of products; environmental threats; and insufficient attention on the part of the EU to the environmental component in support programmes. Different support programmes have been created to ease the challenges above, and these are analysed by the paper. In light of the country’s prospective EU membership, the paper proposes the following solutions to ensure safe and high-quality production of Ukrainian food: budget financing, effective taxation, a fair price policy, soft loans (in particular for organic farming), grant support, and new subsidy programmes.

Short Food Supply Chains (SFSCs) are central to the alternative food movement discourse. SFSCs are based upon the interrelations among actors who are directly involved in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food products. They depend upon actors mobilising resources of various kinds: skills; knowledge; labour; capital; buildings etc. External factors such as policies and regulations can also encourage the creation of these shorter chains. The development of SFSCs can still be hindered by a range of other factors. Nevertheless, bottlenecks can be overcome via the sharing of information on successful SFSCs through the dissemination of Good Practices between various actors and territories. The Short Supply Chain Knowledge and Innovation (SKIN) project uses the term ‘good’ rather than ‘best’ practice to draw attention to the subjective lens through which a practice is ultimately evaluated by an end-user. This paper first outlines the many issues that confront SFSC actors which represent bottlenecks to the adoption of ‘Good Practices’. It then documents the Good Practices collected as part of the SKIN project as tangible examples of how SFSCs overcome such challenges. Lessons learnt from project highlights are subsequently assessed in an effort to mitigate and offer solutions to the challenges associated ...