Sustainable supply chain management: a case study on cocoa industry in Indonesia

Following the important issue raised on the World Council of Economic Development in 1987 on sustainability, many countries and firms are pursuing to reach the excellence of sustainability related to know-how such as environmental issues, human resource management issues, quality management issues and many more. To some extent, agriculture sector became the sector that prioritizes for sustainable development of countries. This research intends to addressing issues of sustainable development with particularity from sustainable supply chain management point of view. Many researches are focusing on the practices of sustainability on their supply chain in separate approaches not as the holistic approach and potentially minimizing the impact of sustainable supply chain management practices in the operations. Moreover, in agriculture sector, lack of attention has been employed to farmers which then, deter the application and implication of sustainable supply chain management in agricultural sector. Thus, the importance of sustainability in agricultural supply chain become relevant and considers being equal to any other supply chain in the world. While considering its importance to the economic development of a country, recent attention on the food safety issue also raises concern on the effective sustainable agricultural supply chain following several food recalls in various countries around the world. Thus, greater attention has been implied to sustainable practices and sustainable supply chain management in a wider aspect and touches the initial stage of the agro–food chain; the farmers. Moreover, it becomes more interesting as the discussion on sustainable agricultural supply chain only counted for one-tenth of the total literature in the sustainable supply chain mainstream. It shows that the will drove a further understanding towards betterment for agricultural supply chain. ii As for research’s sample, cocoa, as one of the commodity in agriculture, plays important role in the market of food products and become important sector for the income of certain countries. The industry itself employs millions of farmers and contributes significantly to eradicate poverty in many countries as well as providing employment from the downstream to the upstream of the industry. To some extent, cocoa supply chain can be an example for understanding how sustainability can be exercised in agricultural supply chain. It also faced several problem related sustainability principles such as low income of farmers, usage of child labor and the use of conventional transport vehicles which then, makes a suitable example for a research on agricultural supply chain.