Journal articles on the topic 'Grange Wholesale Supply Co'

Price formation mechanisms along the supply chain determine the economic viability of effective agro-food supply chains in emerging countries with small-scale subsistence-based agricultural activities. This study offers an analysis of the price formation mechanism along the Chinese fresh vegetable supply chain. It analyzes the features of market transactions in the upstream and downstream greenhouse cucumber supply chain, and presents an elastic model of pricing in the fresh and raw vegetable market in China. Based on the daily procurement price data of 78 cases in Lingyuan (Liaoning Province, China), and the wholesale price of 78 cases in Xinfadi (Beijing, China), the Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) unit root test, co-integration test, and Granger test were applied to reveal the relationship between the prices. Findings indicate that the price of fresh and raw vegetables is formed at the wholesale market, where after it cascades from wholesalers to direct buyers (primary merchants) and farmers, and is passed on to retailers and consumers, where the final market price is formed. Farmers exhibit bounded rationality decision-making, that is, they can only passively accept price fluctuations. Buyers (primary merchants, wholesalers’ agents, and retailers) at each level extract fixed rewards, while making no additional contribution to the price fluctuations along the chain. The wholesalers enjoy an oligopolistic competition market and can better take advantage of the asymmetric information to accommodate market demand.

This study aims to analyze the price transmission within the supply chains of Thailand’s oil palm and palm oil markets. The study employs time-series data from January 2012 to December 2019, which comprises 96 monthly price samples, using econometric analysis, namely, the ADF unit root, Granger causality, co-integration, and error correction model. The empirical results show that (1) there are four causal relationships from crude palm oil price running to palm fruit price, the wholesale price of bottle-refined palm oil, and the retail price of bottle-refined palm oil, and from the wholesale price of bottle refined palm oil running to the wholesale price of gallon refined palm oil. The results further reveal that (2) the palm fruit price has the highest price transmission efficiency, followed by the wholesale price of bottle-refined palm oil, the retail price of bottle-refined palm oil and the wholesale price of gallon refined palm oil. The findings conclude that the crude palm oil price influences the pricing in Thailand’s oil palm and palm oil markets.

The known circumstances that favour financialisation of commodity markets which result in unidirectional co-movement of equity and commodity indices are either weak or non-existent in India. Yet, after 2015, there has been a greater correlation between equity and commodity markets even when decoupling is observed in global markets. Results from the rolling regression attest to the shift in response of commodity and equity indices to wholesale price inflation (WPI) and call rate after 2015, indicating that post 2015 co-movement could have been a result of inflation targeting regime. The linear regression as well as the Granger causality analysis based on vector autoregression (VAR) framework, which accounts for simultaneity, confirms that commodity markets are moving on its own supply-demand factors. The rolling regression also brings to light the disciplining effect of regulatory scrutiny and audit trail in the Indian commodity market around July 2013, when National Spot Exchange Ltd. (NSEL) payment crisis and commodity transaction taxes (CTT) occurred. JEL Classifications: G180, G28, C580, G1, G100. G130

The purpose of this study was to analyze long-run causal relationship between ISE (Islamabad Stock Exchange) and macroeconomic variables in Pakistan and also find out the direction of causality. The impact of macroeconomic variables on stock prices of ISE has not been previously discussed by the researchers. The monthly data from January 2001 to December 2010 was used in this study. The set of macroeconomic variables include Exchange Rate (ER), Foreign Exchange Reserves (FER), Industrial Production Index (IPI), Interest Rate (IR), Imports (M), Money Supply (MS), Wholesale Price Index (WPI) and Exports (X). Descriptive statistics and Unit root test, Johansen Co-integration Technique and Granger Causality Technique were employed to analyze the long-run and causal relationship between the macroeconomic variables and stock prices.  The results revealed that M showed positive and significant relationship but Foreign Exchange Reserves (FER) and Industrial Production Index (IPI) indicated positive and insignificant relationship with the stock prices. Exchange rate(ER), Money supply (MS) and  Whole sale price index(WPI) showed negative but significant relationship while Interest  rate (IR) and Export( X )indicated a negative and insignificant relationship with the stock prices. The findings of Granger Causality revealed that only exports showed a unidirectional causal relationship.Â

Co-opetition supply chain is now the normal mode of development among enterprises. Based on the co-opetition supply chain, this paper designs a model to study the procurement strategy between OEM and two suppliers with supply uncertainty. We find that the profit increase of OEM is less affected by the wholesale price of a single supplier when purchasing through a single channel suppress. The dual purchase strategy has a great advantage, which leads to price war and reduces wholesale price. However, it is interesting to find that when the technical level of competitive suppliers is constantly improving, the order quantity of competitive suppliers is not always rising, but presents a single peak mode. This shows that OEM can deal with the threat of profit by reducing the orders to competitive suppliers.

As a staple food, rice has an enormous market in Bangladesh in terms of market participants and the volume of the product. As the price of rice is always a sensitive factor for producers, poor consumers and policy makers, this paper investigates market integration and price transmission along the vertical supply chain of rice. Johansen’s test of co-integration confirmed that farm, wholesale and retail prices are co-integrated in the long-run. A causality test revealed that prices were found to be at wholesale levels for both the upstream and downstream markets. The asymmetry error correction model (ECM) has discovered short-run and long-run asymmetry in price transmission in the vertical supply chain where both producers and consumers were being affected due to positive and negative asymmetry. Threshold autoregressive (TAR) and momentum threshold autoregressive (M-TAR) models have confirmed threshold co-integration as well as threshold effect on asymmetry in price transmission. The results highlight the inevitability of policy implementations and increased public interventions to reduce asymmetry for engendering greater pricing efficiency in Bangladesh rice markets.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to design a contract to coordinate the biomass molding fuel supply chain consisting of a supplier with uncertain supply and a producer with cyclical demand as well as improve the profit of this supply chain. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the supply chain model was build and all the variables and assumptions are set. Stackelberg game model was used to analyze and solve the problem. Furthermore, the authors give numerical examples and result analysis on the basis of data coming from field study and online information about a real biomass fuel supply chain. Findings The wholesale price with shortage penalty contract the authors proposed can coordinate the supply chain. And as the dominator of the supply chain, the producer can realize the redistribution of profits within the supply chain by determine the contract parameters. Research limitations/implications This one-to-one supply chain is a basic of complex supply chain system. Multi-to-one, one-to-multi and multi-to-multi supply chain can be studied in the future. Originality/value The results obtained in this paper can be used as a reference for enterprises in biomass energy supply chain to make contracts and realize the long-term co-operations among supply chain members.

Government subsidy is a common practice in poverty alleviation. We used game theory and the mathematical model of operations management to investigate the efficiency of subsidy with different poverty scales when the firm owns the decision power of the wholesale price. Comparative analysis of the equilibrium solutions demonstrated the following results: Exclusive subsidy has a significant effect on the payoff of the poor farmer, but the dilemma is that the increase in the payoff of the poor farmer is against the payoff decrease of the regular farmer. Sharing subsidy has a counterbalancing effect on the payoff of the poor and regular farmers. Co-subsidy is the best for consumer surplus and social welfare, but it has little effect on improving the poor farmer’s payoff. Generally, when the poor farmers are in the majority, sharing subsidies or co-subsidy is more reasonable than exclusive subsidy. When the poor farmers are in the minority, exclusive or sharing subsidies will be more economical for the government than co-subsidy. Our research helps the government recognize that spending more money may achieve a poor result in poverty alleviation and help the firm realize that it is better to give more subsidies to the poor farmer than to itself. The highlights of the paper are as follows. Firstly, our work provides a new perspective in supply chain operations management with poverty alleviation by considering the participation of the poor and regular farmers together; secondly, the poverty scale is introduced into the mathematical model; thirdly, we pay attention to the impact of government subsidy to enterprise on the payoff of the poor farmer.

Most farmers are experiencing challenges and constraints in accessing agricultural inputs, thus leading to poor and underutilization of agro-inputs and consequently low agricultural productivity in most part of sub-Saharan Africa. This study aimed to assess the agro-input supply sector in Kogi state. A total of 157 input dealers were randomly selected across the twenty-one local government areas in the state. Data were collected using well-structured questionnaire complemented with interview schedule and were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that agro-chemicals, fertilizer and feed were the major inputs supplied by most of the retailers and wholesalers that hardly engage in activities that create awareness about their products. Input prices were the most important preference and consideration factor in the purchase of agro-input by customers and form the basis for competition. Casual, family and child labors that proved to be cheaper, commonly accessible and do not require signing of formal employment contract with workers dominated both the retail and wholesale sectors. Poor government support, poor business condition in addition to poor capital base, high transportation cost, price fluctuations, adulteration were the identified major constraints affecting the agripreneurs. The study recommends capacity development on new marketing strategies, registration of businesses with relevant agencies, provision of credit and financial services; formation of formidable, strong and mutual-trust co-operative societies for input supply actors so as to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural inputs supply sector in the state.

Most farmers are experiencing challenges and constraints in accessing agricultural inputs, thus leading to poor and underutilization of agro inputs and consequently low agricultural productivity in most part of sub-Saharan Africa. This study assessed the agro-input supply sector in Kogi state. A total of 157 input dealers were randomly selected across the twenty-one local government areas in the state. Data were collected using well-structured questionnaire complemented with interview schedule and were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that agro-chemicals, fertilizer and feed were the major inputs supplied by most of the retailers and wholesalers that hardly engage in activities that create awareness about their products. Input prices were the most important preference and consideration factor in the purchase of agro-input by customers and form the basis for competition. Casual, family and child labours that proved to be cheaper, commonly accessible and do not require signing of formal employment contract with workers dominated both the retail and wholesale sectors. Poor government support, poor business condition in addition to poor capital base, high transportation cost, price fluctuations, adulteration were the identified major constraints affecting the agripreneurs. The study recommends capacity development on new marketing strategies, registration of businesses with relevant agencies, provision of credit and financial services; formation of formidable, strong and mutual-trust co-operative societies for input supply actors so as to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of the agricultural inputs supply sector in the state.

The paper studies transformations in electricity and heat markets of the Russian Far East in 1980-2022. The timeline can be broken down into 4 periods of development in the region: pre-reform (1980-1991), economic reform (1992-1999), electricity market reform (2000-2011), and heat market and institutional reform (2012-2022). Development of electricity and heat markets happened during a period of demand and supply imbalance. High costs of energy supply, deficit of energy, and issues with fuel supply in the pre-reform period worsened in the next period. During economic reforms sharp drop in subsidies, rising costs of energy resources, non-payments for energy, lack of investments caused a massive energy crisis in the region despite sharp drop in demand. From the beginning of 2000s the economy started to recover, with demand of electricity growing. During electricity market reforms the Russian Far East was consolidating assets in electricity and heating industries, forming distinct market segments: non-price zone of wholesale market and retail markets of isolated energy systems. The 2000s continued to be plagued by issues of high deprecation of generators, lack of mass investments for modernization, and high energy prices for consumers. The latter required application of several measures after 2012: special decrees of the President and the Government of Russia to construct new electric power plants, modernize and construct CHP power plants; to provide ready infrastructure for residents of the advanced development territories, financed by the state; the state co-financing network infrastructure and connections for priority investment projects; bringing the tariffs for industrial consumers of certain territories of the region to the level of country average.

The article considers the expediency of organic agricultural production with the definition of a number of advantages, such as economic, environmental and social. The conditions for the development of organic agricultural production are given, namely: the presence of large areas of environmentally friendly agricultural land; high fertility of soils; favorable climatic conditions; low level of use of mineral fertilizers, plant protection products; presence of potential consumers market; Export attractiveness of organic products for EU countries; provision of the agrarian sector of the economy by labor resources. The efficiency of production of organic agro production, which is determined by internal (organizational, techno-technological, economic, marketing) and external (economic, institutional, legal, natural-ecological, social) factors, is investigated. The reasons that hinder the efficiency of production of organic products in Ukraine, which can be attributed to: imperfect institutional support and lack of state financial support; Innovative passivity of most manufacturers and management structures; lack of awareness of producers regarding the specifics of organic production and the public regarding the benefits of organic products; the predominance of exports of organic raw materials; processing, production, wholesale and retail trade in organic products of consumption are still underdeveloped; deficit of grain and other agricultural crops of organic origin; insufficient number of cattle as the main producer of organic fertilizers; high cost of borrowed funds; high ethnogeny load on the area of ​​Central and Eastern Ukraine. The evolution of the organic agricultural market will lead to the development of the relevant infrastructure. Agriculture of Ukraine has all the conditions for the development of organic agricultural production, since the soil-climatic allow to significantly expand the volume of organic farming. Co-operation of the organic agricultural sector in Ukraine is presented in the form of dairy cooperatives, which are intended for the sale of milk at more attractive prices. The cooperative movement makes it possible to combine efforts to create real competition for powerful agrarian enterprises and, at the same time, to promote the spread of organic agricultural production.

By reviewing the application status of traditional clock synchronization methods and architectures under different protocols in a comparative way in China, this paper analyzes the application of IEEE1588 protocol in power dispatching automation and puts forward new clock synchronizing schemes in electricity dispatching communication network based on IEEE1588 protocol (or Std. IEC61588) and proposes some futuristic research fields referring to IEEE1588 protocol in power dispatching automation. New schemes have better clock synchronizing precision, featuring in low implementation cost compared with other clock synchronization schemes. At the same time, it will effectively lower system resource requirements, relieve current excessive reliance on GPS clock source, mitigate data fetching and exchange congestion. It will shed light on building domestic power dispatching networks under the PTP protocol as well as constructing smarter power grid both at home and abroad in the future. This work is supported by North China Electric Power University, Sifang & Huaneng Power System Control Co., Ltd and Zhuhai Power Electricity Supply Company in SMART SYNCHRONOUS DEVICE RESEARCH BASED ON IEC61850 AND IEEE 1588 project, which involves a wholesale research in clock synchronization of power dispatching communication networks and developed China’s first set of smart clock synchronization devices, including the clock synchronization handler CSE6000 (briefly introduced in part v) and corresponding kilomega Ethernet switch. Our research results have reached the advanced level at home, and we are applying for a patent protection accordingly.

Recently several changes have been adopted in the conduct of monetary policy in India, like tracking CPI (Consumer Price Index), targeting inflation and so on. However, certain curious features of inflation may have some implications on the effectiveness of such measures. This article tries to explore the nature of inflation during the last decade. There are certain views about the nature of Indian inflation from the structuralist perspective. This article contributes to the literature by empirically testing those propositions and coming out with some significant policy implications. The article is based on monthly data from January 2006 to March 2016. By employing econometric techniques like cointegration and vector autoregression (VAR), the article tries to explain the movements of different components of WPI (Wholesale Price Index) and CPI inflation, both core and headline inflation and how they are related to macroeconomic policy variables. The empirical analyses focus on finding out the existence of co-movements among the inflation and macroeconomic variables, explaining the role of components like food and fuel price in driving CPI and WPI. The results have some important policy implications. First, the movements of WPI and CPI and their headline and core counterparts are not explained by same set of variables. Second, food inflation is not explained by agricultural output pointing to the insufficient increase in supply in agriculture. Third, the determinants of CPI headline and core inflation are not same. So, both of them should be tracked while formulating policies. The relationship among the components of inflation point to the possibility of some adjustment in demand from one set of goods to another, implying adjustments in terms of relative prices which needs further exploration. JEL: E31, E52, C32

Austria is a middle-sized, high-income country in Central Europe with universal health coverage and a highly fragmented health care system. Medicines for outpatient use that are reimbursed by the social health insurance are price-regulated, whereas medicines for inpatient use are neither subject to price regulation nor to health technology assessment (HTA). These medicines are procured by hospitals, hospital groups and provinces which are the main owner of public hospitals. The major pricing policy for new medicines in the outpatient sector is external price referencing. Austria refers to all other 26 European Union (EU) Member States; the determined benchmark price must not exceed the EU average price. External price referencing is based on list prices, but the statutory manufacturer discounts applicable in some reference countries are considered. Regular price reviews with subsequent price adjustments are in place. For generic and biosimilar medicines to be included in the outpatient positive list, a price link policy is applied with different reduction rates for generics and biosimilars. In the supply chain, prices of all medicines are regulated through regressive mark-up schemes for wholesale and community pharmacies. The inclusion in the outpatient positive list is based on an HTA process which comprises pharmacological, medical-therapeutic and economic evaluations, followed by price negotiations about the reimbursement price. For medicines with high financial burden for the public payers, the Austrian Social Insurance (for the outpatient sector) and procurers for hospitals tend to conclude managed-entry agreements with confidential discounts. For outpatient medicines, patients are charged a fixed prescription fee per prescribed item; no further co-payments apply for outpatient or inpatient medicines. Studies have shown that the current pricing and reimbursement policies in Austria have contributed to keep prices of outpatient medicines stable (high-cost medicines tend to range above EU average), whereas the unregulated prices of medicines used in hospitals are frequently the highest in European comparison. Pharmacy mark-ups are also high in comparison to other European countries.

Abstrak Laju pertumbuhan ekonomi Kabupaten Nganjuk selama tahun 2019-2021 sangat fluktuatif terutama pada tahun 2020 yang terkontraksi hingga -1,71 persen akibat pandemic covid-19, sehingga perlu percepatan pertumbuhan ekonomi wilayah dengan menentukan sektor utamanya terlebih dahulu. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui sektor basis dan sektor prospektif Kabupaten Nganjuk selama periode 2019-2021. Metode yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini adalah deskriptif kuantitatif dengan analisis Location Quotient (LQ) dan Dynamic Location Quotient (DLQ). Hasil penelitian dengan analisis LQ menunjukkan terdapat delapan sektor basis di Kabupaten Nganjuk, yaitu : sektor pertanian (PTN), sektor pengadaan air (PAS), sektor kontruksi (KTS), sektor perdagangan besar (PBE), sektor real estat (RES), sektor administrasi pemerintahan (APP), sektor jasa pendidikan (JPN), dan sektor jasa lainnya (JL). Sementara hasil perhitungan DLQ menunjukkan hanya terdapat empat sektor prospektif, yaitu sektor pertanian (PTN), sektor industri pengolahan (IPO), sektor jasa kesehatan (JKS), dan sektor jasa lainnya (JL). Kata Kunci : Sektor Basis, Sektor Prospektif, Location Quotient, Dynamic Location Quotient Abstract The economic growth rate of Nganjuk Regency during 2019-2021 was fluctuating, especially in 2020 which contracted to -1.71 percent due to the co-19 pandemic, so it is necessary to accelerate regional economic growth by first determining the main sectors. This study aims to determine the base sector and prospective sector in Nganjuk Regency during the 2019-2021 period. The method used in this research is descriptive quantitative with Location Quotient (LQ) and Dynamic Location Quotient (DLQ) analysis. The results of the study with LQ analysis show that there are eight base sectors in Nganjuk Regency, namely: the agricultural sector (PTN), the water supply sector (PAS), the construction sector (KTS), the wholesale trade sector (PBE), the real estate sector (RES), the government administration (APP), the education services sector (JPN), and other service sectors (JL). Meanwhile, the results of the DLQ calculation show that there are only four prospective sectors, namely the agricultural sector (PTN), the manufacturing sector (IPO), the health services sector (JKS), and other service sectors (JL). Keywords: Base Sector, Prospective Sector, Location Quotient, Dynamic Location Quotient

The study examines and compares the relationships between Indian stock market indices (BSE Small, Mid and Large Cap) and five macroeconomic variables (Index of Industrial Production, Wholesale Price Index, Money Supply M3, Exchange Rate and Call Money Rate) over the period April 2006 to March 2017. The study applies Augmented-Dickey Fuller test to test the data stationarity. The analysis reveals that data is neither found to be stationary at level nor co-integrated. Hence, the study applies unrestricted Vector Autoregression (VAR) model to establish the short-run relationships. It is observed that macroeconomic variables significantly impact stock prices depending upon the type of index. As per the Granger Causality test, the study found unidirectional relationship from Exchange Rate to BSE Small Cap; unidirectional relationship from Exchange Rate to BSE Mid Cap and BSE Mid Cap towards IIP; bidirectional relationship between BSE Large Cap and Exchange Rate whereas unidirectional relationship from BSE Large Cap to IIP and from Money Supply M3 towards BSE Large Cap.

Problem definition: We consider opportunities for cooperation at the supply level between two firms that are rivals in the end-product market. One of our firms is vertically integrated (VI), has in-house production capabilities, and may also supply its rival. The other is a downstream outsourcing (DO) firm that has better market information. The DO is willing to consider a supply partnership with the VI, but it also has the option to use the outside supply market. Academic/practical relevance: Such co-opetitive practices are common in industrial supply chains, but firms’ co-opetitive strategic sourcing with the potential of information leakage has not been examined in the literature. Methodology: We build a game-theoretic model to capture the firms’ strategic interactions under the co-opetitive supply partnership with the potential information leakage. Results: The DO exploits its information advantage to obtain a better wholesale price from the VI and may use dual sourcing to protect its private information. Anticipating that, the VI may offer wholesale price concessions as an information rent to obtain the DO’s information. Our work identifies demand uncertainty and efficiency of outside supply market as the factors affecting the VI’s pricing decision and the resulting equilibrium. Pooling equilibrium arises often, but in a few cases, the equilibrium is separating. At the separating equilibrium, the DO always single sources, either from the VI or the independent supplier depending on the demand state. The VI benefits from ancillary revenue-generating opportunity, and from information acquisition in a separating equilibrium. On the other hand, the DO’s benefit is a cheaper price in exchange for market information in a separating equilibrium. In the pooling case, the DO uses dual sourcing to hide demand information, especially in the high demand case, and to better supply the end-market through his accurate demand information. Managerial implications: Our work provides useful insights into firms’ strategic sourcing behaviors to efficiently deal with the potential of information leakage in the co-opetitive supply environment and for the rationale behind such relationships often observed in industries.

Developing country food supply chains have been pummeled by a series (and often a confluence) of shocks over the past several decades, including the Russia-Ukraine war, COVID-19, climate shocks from hurricanes to floods to droughts, animal and plant diseases, an intensification of road banditry and local conflicts, and overlaying all these, deep transformation in markets themselves with new requirements for quality and food safety. Yet supply chains have been largely resilient, adapting and bouncing back in surprising ways. We show that this has often involves deep ‘pivoting’ by one segment or one value chain, and ‘co-pivoting’ by another to facilitate the former’s pivot. We present a conceptual framework and then illustrate with a variety of examples from Africa and Asia, such as pivoting toward e-commerce by Asian retailers and co-pivoting by delivery intermediaries; pivoting toward quality horticultural production by African and Asian farmers and co-pivoting by mobile outsource services for farming and marketing; and building of redundant ports to protect rice milling operations from climate shocks in Asia by agribusiness and logistic firms. The paper provides implications for policy to facilitate these adaptions and for resilience strategies of agribusiness firms.

Background: The private sector in Ghana provides 50% of health services in the country yet there is limited information on the supply chain management of MNCH commodities in this sector. Aim: To understand how MNCH commodities are managed within the private sector. Method: A mixed methods approach was used to capture supply chain related data on a subset of MNCH commodities in the private sector. The sampling strategy included the selection of four regions (Ashanti, Greater Accra, Northern, and Upper East) in Ghana. Quantitative data on product management, availability, source, pricing and registration were collected from retail pharmacies, private health facilities and wholesalers. Additionally qualitative data on factors influencing supply decisions were collected from wholesalers. Results: The study showed that retail pharmacies and wholesalers were less likely to manage injectable products like gentamicin, magnesium sulphate and oxytocin as compared to private health facilities. At all three facility types, amoxicillin DT, chlorhexidine gel and ORS + zinc co-pack were the least managed products. The main reason for non-management of MNCH products was “low or no client demand”. Majority of MNCH products had at least half of the most prevalent brands registered. Regarding product pricing, the results showed lower NHIS prices for certain products compared to selling prices at retail pharmacies and health facilities. Ninety percent of all three facility types met at least half of the storage requirements; with 100% of wholesalers and 96% of health facilities storing oxytocin in a working refrigerator. However, 25% of retail pharmacies did not store oxytocin within the recommended temperature range of 2-8 degrees. Conclusion: The private sector is influenced by commercial factors, which could come at a high cost in terms of availability, accessibility, and affordability for individuals and families. There is the need to create a cost incentive that encourages the private sector to offer and improve access to critical MNCH commodities, including amoxicillin DT, ORS + zinc co-pack, chlorhexidine gel and injectable MNCH products. Keywords: Private sector, MNCH, Supply Chain, Wholesale pharmacies, Retail pharmacies

Improving the regional organization of food flow requires an understanding of system constraints. System transformation is necessary if the system is to include regional, independent wholesale food suppliers and to distribute food in an equitable and sustainable manner. Regional suppliers play a pivotal role in overall food system resilience, an emerging issue in wake of the numerous failures in conventional food supply chains exacerbated by COVID-19-related disruptions. Yet alternative supply chains that link local producers with towns and urban centers regionally, represent a small fraction of our nation's food suppliers. They struggle to compete with larger distribution networks that can supply products in-and out-of-season by global procurement. The upper Midwest harbors numerous local and regional food supply chains consisting of farms, processors, trucking companies, wholesalers and other firms that share a commitment to sustainability and local economic development. A constellation of challenges hamper their emergence, however, even as larger scale food supply chains flounder or fail to effectively serve communities. Informed by Donella Meadows's work on leverage points for systemic change, a collaborative, transdisciplinary and systems research effort examined conventional food supply networks and identified key opportunities for shifting food supply chain relationships. System concepts such as stock and flow, leverage points, and critical thresholds helped us to frame and identify challenges and opportunities in the current system. The second and third phase of our collaborative research effort occurred over 4 years (2013–2016) and involved twenty-six people in co-generation of knowledge as a loose-knit team. The team included farmers, supply chain practitioners, students, academic staff and faculty from multiple departments and colleges. Our primary method was to host public workshops with practitioner speakers and participants to identify dominant narratives and key concepts within discourses of different participants in distribution networks. The literature review was iterative, based on challenges, ideas and specific questions discussed at workshops. Our research exposed two meta-narratives shaping the supply chain: diversity and efficiency. In addition to these high-leverage narratives, we identified and examined five key operational thresholds in the Upper Midwest regional food system that could be leveraged to improve food flow in the region. Attention to these areas makes it possible for businesses to operate within environmental limits and develop social structures that can meet scale efficiencies necessary for economic success. We iteratively shared this co-produced knowledge with decision-makers via local food policy councils, local government, and national policy circles with the goal of supplying actionable information. This phased action research project created the environment necessary for a group of food system entrepreneurs to emerge and collaborate, poised to improve system resilience in anticipation of food system disruptions. It forms the basis for on-going research on food flow, regional resilience, and supply chain policy.

IntroductionTraditionally, suburbs have been conceived as dormitory – in binary opposition to the inner-city (Powell). Supporting this stereotypical view have been gendered binaries between inner and outer city areas; densely populated vs. sprawl; gentrified terraces and apartment culture vs. new estates and first home buyers; zones of (male) production and creativity against (female) sedate, consumer territory. These binaries have for over a decade been thoroughly criticised by urban researchers, who have traced such representations and demonstrated how they are discriminatory and incorrect (see Powell; Mee; Dowling and Mee). And yet, such binaries persist in popular media commentaries and even in academic research (Gibson and Brennan-Horley). In creative city research, inner-city areas have been bestowed with the supposed correct mix of conditions that may lead to successful creative ventures. In part, this discursive positioning has been borne out of prior attempts to mapthe location of creativity in the city. Existing research on the geography of creativity in the city have relied on proxy data forms: mapping data on firms and/or employment in the creative industry sectors (e.g. Gibson, Murphy and Freestone; Markusen et al.; Watson). In doing so, the focus has rested on “winners” – i.e. headquarters of major arts and cultural institutions located in inner city/CBD locations, or by looking for concentrations of registered creative businesses. Such previous studies are useful because they give some indication of the geographical spread and significance of creative activities in cities, and help answer questions about the locational preferences of creative industries, including their gravitational pull towards each other in an agglomerative sense (Scott). However, such studies rely on (usually) one proxy data source to reveal the presence of creative activities, rather than detail how creativity is itself apparent in everyday working lives, or embedded in the spaces, networks and activities of the city. The latter, more qualitative aspects of the lived experience of creativity can only at best be inferred from proxy data such as employment numbers and firm location. In contrast, other researchers have promoted ethnographic methods (Drake; Shorthose; Felton, Collis and Graham) including interviewing, snowballing through contacts and participant observation, as means to get ‘inside’ creative industries and to better understand their embeddedness in place and networks of social relations. Such methods provide rich explanation of the internal dynamics and social logics of creative production, but having stemmed from text-based recorded interviews, they produce data without geographical co-ordinates necessary to be mapped in the manner of employment or business location data – and thus remain comparatively “aspatial”, with no georeferenced component. Furthermore, in such studies relational interactions with material spaces of home, work and city are at best conveyed in text form only – from recorded interviews – and thus cannot be aggregated easily as a mapped representation of city life. This analysis takes a different tack, by mapping responses from interviews, which were then analysed using methods more common in mapping and analysing proxy data sources. By taking a qualitative route toward data collection, this paper illustrates how suburbs can actually play a major role in creative city economies, expanding understandings of what constitutes a creative workplace and examining the resulting spatial distributions according to their function. Darwin and the Creative Tropical City Project This article draws on fieldwork carried out in Darwin, NT a small but important city in Australia’s tropical north. It is the government and administration capital of the sparsely populated Northern Territory and continues to grapple with its colonial past, a challenging climate, small population base and remoteness from southern centres. The city’s development pattern is relatively new, even in Australian terms, only dating back to the late 1970s. After wholesale destruction by Cyclone Tracy, Darwin was rebuilt displaying the hallmarks of post-1970 planning schemes: wide ring-roads and cul-de-sacs define its layout, its urban form dominated by stout single-story suburban dwellings built to withstand cyclonic activity. More recently, Darwin has experienced growth in residential tower block apartments, catering to the city’s high degree of fly-in, fly-out labour market of mining, military and public service workers. These high rise developments have been focussed unsurprisingly on coastal suburbs with ample sections of foreshore. Further adding to its peculiar layout, the geographic centre is occupied by Darwin Airport (a chief military base for Australia’s northern frontier) splitting the northern suburbs from those closer to its small CBD, itself jutting to the south on a peninsula. Lacking then in Darwin are those attributes so often heralded as the harbingers of a city’s creative success – density, walkability, tracts of ex-industrial brownfields sites ripe for reinvention as creative precincts. Darwin is a city dominated by its harsh tropical climate, decentralised and overtly dependant on private car transport. But, if one cares to look beyond the surface, Darwin is also a city punching above its weight on account of the unique possibilities enabled by transnational Asian proximity and its unique role as an outlet for indigenous creative work from across the top of the continent (Luckman, Gibson and Lea). Against this backdrop, Creative Tropical City: Mapping Darwin’s Creative Industries (CTC), a federally funded ARC project from 2006 to 2009, was envisaged to provide the evidential base needed to posit future directions for Darwin’s creative industries. City and Territory leaders had by 2004 become enchanted by the idea of ‘the creative city’ (Landry) – but it is questionable how well these policy discourses travel when applied to disparate examples such as Darwin (Luckman, Gibson and Lea). To provide an empirical grounding to creative city ideas and to ensure against policy fetishism the project was developed to map the nature, extent and change over time of Darwin’s creative industries and imagine alternate futures for the city based on a critical appraisal of the applicability of national and international creative industry policy frameworks to this remote, tropical location (Lea et al.). Toward a Typology of Darwin’s Creative Workplaces This article takes one data set gathered during the course of the CTC project, based around a participatory mapping exercise, where interviewees responded to questions about where creative industry activities took place in Darwin by drawing on paper maps. Known as mental maps, these were used to gather individual representations of place (Tuan), but in order to extend their applicability for spatial querying, responses were transferred to a Geographic Information System (GIS) for storage, collation and analysis (Matei et al.). During semi-structured interviews with 98 Darwin-based creative industry practitioners, participants were provided with a base map of Darwin displaying Statistical Local Area (SLA) boundaries and roads for mark up in response to specific questions about where creative activities occurred (for more in depth discussion of this method and its varied outputs, refer to Brennan-Horley and Gibson). The analysis discussed here only examines answers to one question: “Where do you work?” This question elicited a total of 473 work locations from 98 respondents – a fourfold increase over statistics gleaned from employment measures alone (Brennan-Horley). Such an increase resulted from participants identifying their everyday work practices which, by necessity, took place across multiple locations. When transferring the spatial location of workplaces into the GIS, each site was coded depending on whether it was cited by the interviewee as their “major” or primary place of work, or if the place being discussed played a secondary or “minor” role in their creative practice. For example, an artist’s studio was categorised as major, but other minor sites also featured in their mental maps, for example, galleries, supply locations and teaching sites. Each worksite was then assigned to one of four categories: Front, Back, Networking and Supply (Table 1). In a similar fashion to McCannell’s work on the “front and back regions” of tourist towns (597), the creative industries, predicated on the production and exchange of texts, objects and ideas also display front spaces of sorts – sites that facilitate interactions between practitioner and audiences, spaces for performance and consumption. Operating behind these front spaces, are sites where creative endeavours take place – perhaps not as so readily seen or engaged with by wider publics. For example, a rehearsal room, artist’s studio or a theatre company’s office may not be key sites of interaction between creator and audience but remain nonetheless important sites of creative work. However, a binary of Front versus Back could not encapsulate the variety of other everyday, prosaic work sites evident in the data. Participants indicated on their maps visits to the post office to send artworks, going to Bunnings to buy paint (and inadvertently networking with others), through to more fleeting spaces such as artist materials fossicked from parklands to photoshoot locations. These supply sites (each themselves positioned along a continuum of “creative” to “mundane”) were typified as supply locations: sites that act as places to gather inputs into the creative process. Finally, sites where meetings and networking took place (more often than not, these were indicated by participants as occurring away from their major work place) were assigned under a heading of networking spaces. Table 1: A typology of creative workplaces Space Definition Coded examples Front A space for consumption/exchange of creative goods, outputs or expertise. Performance space, Market, Gallery, Client Location, Shopfront, Cinema, Exhibition space, Museum, Festival space Back A site of production, practice or business management Office, Studio, Rehearsal Space, Teaching Space, Factory, Recording Studio Networking A space to meet clients or others involved in creative industries Meeting places Supply Spaces where supplies for creative work are sourced Supplier, Photoshoot Location, Story Location, Shoot Location, Storage Coding data into discrete units and formulating a typology is a reductive process, thus a number of caveats apply to this analysis. First there were numerous cases where worksites fell across multiple categories. This was particularly the case with practitioners from the music and performing arts sector whose works are created and consumed at the same location, or a clothing designer whose studio is also their shopfront. To avoid double counting, these cases were assigned to one category only, usually split in favour of the site’s main function (i.e. performance sites to Front spaces). During interviews, participants were asked to locate parts of Darwin they went to for work, rather than detail the exact role or name for each of those spaces. While most participants were forthcoming and descriptive in their responses, in two percent of cases (n=11) the role of that particular space was undefined. These spaces were placed into the “back” category. Additionally, the data was coded to refer to individual location instances aggregated to the SLA level, and does not take into account the role of specific facilities within suburbs, even though certain spaces were referred to regularly in the transcripts. It was often the case that a front space for one creative industry practitioner was a key production site for another, or operated simultaneously as a networking site for both. Future disaggregated analyses will tease out the important roles that individual venues play in Darwin’s creative economy, but are beyond this article’s scope. Finally, this analysis is only a snapshot in time, and captures some of the ephemeral and seasonal aspects of creative workplaces in Darwin that occurred around the time of interviewing. To illustrate, there are instances of photographers indicating photo shoot locations, sites that may only be used once, or may be returned to on multiple occasions. As such, if this exercise were to be carried out at another time, a different geography may result. Results A cross-tabulation of the workplace typology against major and minor locations is given in Table 2. Only 20 per cent of worksites were designated as major worksites with the remaining 80 per cent falling into the minor category. There was a noticeable split between Back and Front spaces and their Major/Minor designation. 77 per cent of back spaces were major locations, while the majority of Front spaces (92 per cent) fell into the minor category. The four most frequently occurring Minor Front spaces – client location, performance space, markets and gallery – collectively comprise one third of all workplaces for participants, pointing to their important role as interfacing spaces between creative output produced or worked on elsewhere, and wider publics/audiences. Understandably, all supply sites and networking places were categorised as minor, with each making up approximately 20 per cent of all workplaces. Table 2: creative workplaces cross tabulated against primary and secondary workplaces and divided by creative workplace typology. Major Minor Grand Total Back Office 44 1 45 Studio 22 - 22 Rehearsal Space 7 11 18 Undefined - 11 11 Teaching Space 3 1 4 Factory 1 - 1 Recording Studio 1 - 1 Leanyer Swamp 1 - 1 Back space total 79 24 103 Front Client Location - 70 70 Performance Space 2 67 69 Market 1 11 12 Gallery 3 8 11 Site - 8 8 Shopfront 1 3 4 Exhibition Space - 3 3 Cinema 2 1 3 Museum 1 1 2 Shop/Studio 1 - 1 Gallery and Office 1 - 1 NightClub 1 - 1 Festival space - 1 1 Library 1 - 1 Front Space total 14 173 187 Networking Meeting Place - 94 94 Networking space total - 94 94 Supply Supplier - 52 52 Photoshoot Location - 14 14 Story Location - 9 9 Shoot Location - 7 7 Storage - 4 4 Bank - 1 1 Printer - 1 1 Supply Space total - 88 88 Grand Total 93 379 472 The maps in Figures 1 through 4 analyse the results spatially, with individual SLA scores provided in Table 3. The maps use location quotients, representing the diversion of each SLA from the city-wide average. Values below one represent a less than average result, values greater than one reflecting higher results. The City-Inner SLA maintains the highest overall percentage of Darwin’s creative worksites (35 per cent of the total) across three categories, Front, Back and especially Networking sites (60 per cent). The concentration of key arts institutions, performance spaces and CBD office space is the primary reason for this finding. Additionally, the volume of hospitality venues in the CBD made it an amenable place to conduct meetings away from major back spaces. Figure 1: Back spaces by Statistical Local Areas Figure 2: Front spaces by Statistical Local Areas Figure 3: Networking sites, by Statistical Local Areas Figure 4: Supply sites by Statistical Local Areas However this should not deter from the fact that the majority of all worksites (65 per cent) indicated by participants actually reside in suburban locations. Numerically, the vast majority (70 per cent) of Darwin’s Front spaces are peppered across the suburbs, with agglomerations occurring in The Gardens, Fannie Bay, Nightcliff and Parap. The Gardens is the location for Darwin’s biggest weekly market (Mindl Beach night market), and a performance space for festivals and events during the city’s long dry season. Mirroring more the cultures of its neighbouring SE Asian counterparts, Darwin sustains a vibrant market culture unlike that of any other Australian capital city. As the top end region is monsoonal, six months of the year is guaranteed to be virtually rain free, allowing for outdoor activities such as markets and festivals to flourish. Markets in Darwin have a distinctly suburban geography with each of the three top suburban SLAs (as measured by Front spaces) hosting a regular market, each acting as temporary sites of networking and encounter for creative producers and audiences. Importantly, over half of the city’s production sites (Back spaces) were dispersed across the suburbs in two visible arcs, one extending from the city taking in Fannie Bay and across to Winnellie via Parap, and through the northern coastal SLAs from Coconut Grove to Brinkin (Figure 1). Interestingly, 85 per cent of all supply points were also in suburban locations. Figure 4 maps this suburban specialisation, with the light industrial suburb of Winnellie being the primary location for Darwin’s creative practitioners to source supplies. Table 3: Top ten suburbs by workplace mentions, tabulated by workplace type* SLA name Front Back Networking Supply Workplace total Inner City/CBD City - Inner 56 (29.9%) 35 (36%) 57 (60.6%) 13 (14.8%) 162 (34.3%) Inner City Total 56 (29.9%) 35 (36%) 57 (60.6%) 13 (14.8%) 162 (34.3%) Top 10 suburban The Gardens 30 (16%) 3 (2.9%) 6 (6.4%) 5 (5.7%) 44 (9.3%) Winnellie 3 (1.6%) 7 (6.8%) 1 (1.1%) 24 (27.3%) 35 (7.4%) Parap 14 (7.5%) 4 (3.9%) 6 (6.4%) 9 (10.2%) 33 (7%) Fannie Bay 17 (9.1%) 5 (4.9%) 4 (4.3%) 2 (2.3%) 28 (5.9%) Nightcliff 14 (7.5%) 7 (6.8%) 2 (2.1%) 4 (4.5%) 27 (5.7%) Stuart Park 4 (2.1%) 8 (7.8%) 4 (4.3%) 4 (4.5%) 20 (4.2%) Brinkin 1 (0.5%) 8 (7.8%) 9 (9.6%) 2 (2.3%) 20 (4.2%) Larrakeyah 5 (2.7%) 5 (4.9%) 1 (1.1%) 3 (3.4%) 14 (3%) City - Remainder 5 (2.7%) 2 (1.9%) 0 (0%) 6 (6.8%) 13 (2.8%) Coconut Grove 3 (1.6%) 4 (3.9%) 1 (1.1%) 4 (4.5%) 12 (2.5%) Rapid Creek 3 (1.6%) 6 (5.8%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 9 (1.9%) Suburban Total** 131 (70.1%) 67 (65%) 37 (39.4%) 75 (85%) 310 (65.7%) City-Wide Total 187 103 94 88 472 *All percentages calculated from city- wide total **Suburban total row includes all 27 suburbs, not just top tens Discussion There are two key points to take from this analysis. First, the results show the usefulness of combining in-depth qualitative research with GIS mapping methods. Interviewing creative workers about where activities in their working days (or nights) take place, rather than defaulting to incomplete industry statistics can reveal a more comprehensive view of where creative work manifests in the city. Second, the role that multiple, decentred and often suburban facilities played as sites of supply, production and consumption in Darwin’s creative economy leads theories about the spatiality of creativity in the city in new directions. These results clearly show that the cultural binaries that theorists have assumed shape perceptions of the city and its suburbs do not appear in this instance to be infusing the everyday nature of creative work in the city. What was revealed by this data is that creative work in the city creates a variegated city produced through practitioners’ ordinary daily activities. Creative workers are not necessarily resisting or reinventing ideas of what the suburbs mean, they are getting on with creative work in ways that connect suburbs and the city centre in complex – and yet sometimes quite prosaic – ways. This is not to say that the suburbs do not present challenges for the effective conduct of creative work in Darwin – transport availability and lack of facilities were consistently cited problems by practitioners – but instead what is argued here is that ways of understanding the suburbs (in popular discourse, and in response in critical cultural theory) that emanate from Sydney or Los Angeles do not provide a universal conceptual framework for a city like Darwin. By not presuming that there is a meta-discourse of suburbs and city centres that everyone in every city is bound to, this analysis captured a different geography. In conclusion, the case of Darwin displayed decentred and dispersed sites of creativity as the norm rather than the exception. 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