Industry Strategic Planning: Keeping Supply Chains Competitive

Agricultural industries are increasingly challenged to develop strategies that enable them, as a group of firms and industry organizations, to respond to an increasingly global marketplace. One approach used by several industries is the application of strategic planning and management tools, commonly used in a single business setting, to coordinate analysis and action at an industry level. This is accomplished through a relation-based strategic group of firms from multiple levels in the vertical supply chain. Here it is suggested that this type of strategic effort, called industry strategic planning, provides unique benefits for industries engaged in such an effort, including limiting incentives for increased concentration and vertical integration. As such, industry strategic planning can be a useful method for revitalizing and sustaining agricultural industries. The dynamic forces changing the structure of today's agri-food system appear to favor large multinational conglomerates and/or highly concen-trated domestic firms that are integrated either hori-zontally, vertically, or both. Recent congressional hearings and increasing producer concerns about market concentration and the growing power o