Simulating the Structural Evolution in Agri-food Supply Chain: An Agent-Based Model

Nowadays in China, one of the most challenges of improving agri-food quality safety is that millions of fragmented and small scale farmers are organized and structured well, which is how to integrate them into the closer agri-food supply chain. The overall goal of this study is to simulate and analyze the structural evolution in agri-food supply chain by building an agent-based model of supply chain for the sake of improving the agri-food quality safety. Based on the simulation experiments, this study shows that contract transaction mode contributes to agri-food food quality safety by connecting farmers tightly. Furthermore, the stronger regulation on wholesalers helps increase the number of contractual wholesaler, and improve food safety. Similarly, the stronger regulation on farmers helps increase the number of contractual farmer, enhance the scale of contractual wholesalers, and improve agri-food quality safety. By comparison, the policy about stronger regulation on farmer is more effective on improving agri-food quality safety.