We use a combination of primary and secondary data to investigate and quantify the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the California specialty crop sector. We demonstrate that the specialty crop sector was highly resilient during the pandemic and aftermath in terms of output. For many crops, production fell somewhat between 2019 and 2021, but not to an extent that is outside of normal annual variation for fruits and vegetables. However, prices increased dramatically for many commodities. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most input costs did not surge during the pandemic, and some fell. But both the primary and secondary data identify labor and truck transportation as the major issues facing producers and driving up prices. Trade associations played a vital role in disseminating solutions to growers throughout the pandemic.

Blockchain is a well-known prominent technology that has gotten a lot of interest beyond the financial industry, attracting researchers and practitioners from numerous businesses and fields. Specific uses of blockchain in supply chain management (SCM) are addressed in business practice. By combining two perspectives on blockchain in SCM, this study provides comprehensive knowledge in this field using a bibliometric approach. We will explore the worldwide research trend in related topic areas. By collecting data from the Web of Science, we collected 400 articles related to our research topic from 2016 until early 2021. We eliminated research in the form of technical reports, editorials, comments, and consultancy articles to maintain the quality of the data gathering. VOSviewer is used to create visualization maps based on text and bibliographic information. The examination uncovered helpful information, such as annual publishing and citation patterns, the top research topic, the top authors, and the most supporting funding organizations in this field.

This Editors' Forum – ‘Made in China: Implications of Chinese Product Recalls’ – presents four perspectives on Chinese product recalls: supply chain management, moral degradation or the decline of traditional business ethics, evidence based management and free riding on the ‘Made in China’ brand. Extended supply chains and uncertain ethical standards almost certainly contribute to lapses in product quality as do cost pressures facing most Chinese firms. Product quality issues, moreover, will be most significant for goods posing hidden risks to health and safety, such as food and toys, and less significant for goods like computers and consumer electronics whose conformity to specifications can be readily monitored.

We study the pricing problem between two firms when the manufacturer’s willingness to pay(wtp) for the supplier’s good is not known by the latter. We demonstrate that it is in theinterest of the manufacturer to hide this information from the supplier. The precision ofthe information available to the supplier modifies the rent distribution. The risk ofopportunistic behaviour entails a loss of efficiency in the supply chain. The model isextended to the case of a supplier submitting offers to several manufacturers. Somemanagerial insight through a numerical illustration is provided.

The risk of demand or production cost disruption is one of the challenging problems in the supply chain management. This paper explores a generalized supply chain game model incorporating the possible disruptions. We find that a nonlinear Grove wholesale price scheme can fully coordinate such a supply chain even when both market demand and production cost are disrupted. The nonlinear Grove wholesale price scheme has three sides to coordinate the decision behavior of the players. One is that the mechanism can induce the retail pricing decided by the dominant retailer to be equal with that of the channel; the second is that the mechanism can induce fringe retailers to be not priced out of the market; the third is that the mechanism can ensure that the manufacturer uses minimum incentives to induce the dominant retailer to sell its product as well as providing the demand-stimulating service. Disruptions from both demand side and production cost side may also affect the wholesale price, order quantity as well as retail price, and the share of the dominant retailer and the subsidy rate provided by the manufacturer are unity of opposites. We also find that it is optimal for the manufacturer to keep the original production plan when the joint-disruption amount is sufficiently small.

Companies in the food industry are driven to improve their traceability for several reasons. The primary reasons are food safety and quality. Another is the response to the increased interest among consumers in imperceptible product attributes such as organic, fair trade, dolphin-safe and non genetically modified (non-GMO). Such attributes are hard to distinguish and thus require generally enhanced traceability in order to verify their existence. This has led to an emergent area in which actors engage in gaining and maintaining traceability and communicating it to the consumers. This paper describes the relations between the actors in a supply chain (SC) in the field of organic food systems. It examines the objectives each actor has for gaining and maintaining traceability throughout the SC. The focus on organic relates to the challenge for the companies to ensure this imperceptible product attribute throughout the entire food system. A single case study was conducted in an organic food system providing organic ice cream products. The data collection included semi-structured interviews, observations, a review of internal documents and a survey among the participating companies. The findings illustrate and elaborate on the objectives companies have for engaging in traceability. The objectives identified are divided into three categories: food safety and quality, managing the SC and internal resources and communication with consumers. The survey confirms the results from the interviews that all actors want to engage in traceability. They prioritize the objectives differently, however. The study highlights the value of close relations between the actors when addressing consumer concerns regarding product and process characteristics, such as the imperceptible organic attribute.