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FutureCentral > Sustainable Agribusiness in the AI Era
Sustainable Agribusiness in the AI Era book cover
Agribusiness & Sustainability · MBA / Postgraduate

Sustainable Agribusiness in the AI Era

Austin PM · FutureCentral Press

Examine agribusiness decisions through economic, environmental and social consequences, from enterprise management and inclusive value chains to technology, climate resilience and governance.

Manuscript chapters available26 chaptersCases and applied exercises
Read the samplesRequest academic copyView contents
EditionFirst edition · in preparation
Structure26 chapters · 6 parts
AudienceMBA and agribusiness managers
AboutRead samplesFrameworksContentsResourcesAcademic enquiries

Sustainability in agribusiness decisions

The book connects the agri-food system with strategy, marketing, finance, operations, people and control. It then examines value chains, producer institutions, natural resources, climate, digital agriculture and responsible AI.

Cases, frameworks, sustainability decision boxes, applied exercises and discussion questions ask readers to assess the economics of a decision alongside its environmental and social effects.

What readers will learn

  • Map the agribusiness system and the institutions shaping its decisions.
  • Connect enterprise strategy, finance and operations with sustainability.
  • Evaluate chain governance, upgrading and smallholder inclusion.
  • Assess climate resilience, natural resources and circular systems.
  • Examine digital and AI applications alongside data and governance requirements.
  • Build a sustainable enterprise proposal that makes its trade-offs explicit.

Make the decision and explain its consequences

Applied exercises ask readers to use real operating records and identify who pays, who gains and who carries the risk. The sample chain-mapping exercise brings those questions into one practical deliverable.

Read before you decide

Explore the book and its practical work

Read a representative chapter, then examine the exercise and discussion questions online.

Book sample · Chapter 13

Value Chains and Market Linkages

Who sets the terms in an agri-food chain, what moving up one is known to pay, and why the producer sometimes takes a smaller share of a larger number

Includes two frameworks, Indian and global cases, a sustainability decision and references.

Read sample chapter →
Practical work sample

Value-Chain Exercise Sample

Sustainable Agribusiness in the AI Era

Map a chain, calculate the producer’s share and examine the governance of every link.

Read exercise sample →
Two frameworks from Chapter 13

Frameworks from the book

Chain Governance and the Excluded Cell

Use transaction complexity, codifiability and supplier capability to examine the governance of individual links. The chapter draws on Gereffi, Humphrey and Sturgeon’s typology and distinguishes exclusion from poor terms within a chain.

The Upgrading Trajectory Map

The chapter’s own instrument examines process, product, functional and chain upgrading. It adds the cost of each move, the party carrying its risk and whether the investor receives a return after accounting for that risk.

Read Chapter 13 for the frameworks and their application →

Table of contents

View all 26 chapters

Part I: The Agribusiness System And Its New Frame

  1. Agribusiness as a System: From Input to Consumer
    Why the coordination problem the manager inherits has become a durability problem
  2. Environment, Policy and Institutions
    How the architecture around the enterprise decides what a manager is allowed to do
  3. Managerial Economics of Agri-Food Markets
    Reading the market signal and the true cost at the same time
  4. Sustainability as the Organizing Frame
    Building the instrument the rest of the book applies
  5. Data and AI Foundations for the Manager
    What these systems do, what they cannot do, and how to tell the difference

Part Ii: Managing The Agribusiness Enterprise

  1. Strategy and Competitive Advantage
    Which sustainability moves are positions, and which are costs
  2. Agri-Food Marketing and Consumer Insight
    Which claims a buyer can check, and what checking costs
  3. Finance, Investment and Agri-Fintech
    What a green label is worth in basis points, and what it costs to earn
  4. Production and Operations Management
    What a liter of water buys in output, and where the accounting stops
  5. Supply Chain, Logistics and Traceability
    What the record can prove when the consignment arrives, and what breaks on the way
  6. People, Organization and Leadership
    What a firm can show about the people who work for it and supply it, and what nobody has counted
  7. Accounting, Costing and Control
    Which environmental and social quantities a control system can hold a manager to, and which ones two professionals cannot yet reproduce

Part Iii: Value Chains, Institutions And Inclusive Enterprise

  1. Value Chains and Market Linkages
    Who sets the terms in an agri-food chain, what moving up one is known to pay, and why the producer sometimes takes a smaller share of a larger number
  2. Cooperatives, FPOs and Collective Enterprise
    What the collective form actually is as an economic object, what membership is known to do for a member, and what it costs to run one at the scale where it survives
  3. Smallholders and Inclusive Business Models
    What a contract between a firm and a smallholder rests on, why the schemes that fail leave no trace in the evidence, and how a relationship is held together where a court will never arrive
  4. Agri-Inputs, Post-Harvest and Processing
    Where the footprint and the margin actually sit in the industries on either side of the farm, and how to establish what any number quoted about them was measured on

Part Iv: Sustainability In Practice

  1. Climate-Smart and Regenerative Agriculture
    What the evidence establishes about practices sold as a triple win, why a promise of three benefits together has almost never been tested together, and how a manager builds a transition case that will survive an auditor
  2. Natural Resources: Water, Soil and Biodiversity
    Why the money figures attached to nature keep failing when traced, which physical quantities a business can actually manage, and how to tell the two apart before either enters a decision
  3. Carbon Markets and Green Finance
    What a carbon credit is as an instrument, what its own issuer warrants about it, and why the arithmetic of measuring a tonne of agricultural soil carbon costs more than the tonne is worth
  4. Circular Systems and Measuring Sustainability
    Why three quarters of the cost of a circular business is spent before the material reaches the gate, and why two honest preparers applying the same standard report different numbers

Part V: Technology, Innovation And Entrepreneurship

  1. Digital and AI-Enabled Agriculture in Practice
    Why twenty years of farm records say precision technology repairs a badly run farm and adds little to a well-run one, and what a manager is entitled to buy on a capability figure alone
  2. Agri-Startups, AgriTech and Innovation
    Why the agritech failure statistic everybody quotes does not exist, and what the three quantities that are actually measured tell a founder about the company they are building
  3. Agri Risk, Insurance and Resilience
    Why a well-designed weather index leaves a farmer holding seven tenths of the risk it was bought to remove, and what a manager does about the rest

Part Vi: Global Context And Integration

  1. Trade, Globalization and Sustainable Exports
    Why the fee to certify a tonne is the same whichever claim you sell it under, why one of those claims earns eight times what another does, and what a manager does with the difference
  2. Governance, Ethics and Responsible AI
    Why the instrument that would govern an agri-AI system does not reach it, why the one provision that does reach it will not bind until December 2027, and what a board writes down in the meantime
  3. Capstone: Designing the Sustainable Agri-Enterprise
    Why an enterprise can clear its viability floor, hold its inclusion floor and still be spending down the thing it depends on, and what a designer does about it before the season starts
Learning and teaching support

Teaching and study resources

Applied exercises

Practical assignments connect chapter concepts with maps, records and enterprise decisions.

Discussion questions

Questions help readers examine competing decisions and the evidence behind them.

Frameworks

Named frameworks organize assessments of strategy, chain governance and sustainability.

Case illustrations

Indian and global cases connect concepts with enterprise and institutional settings.

Decision boxes and references

Sustainability decision boxes make trade-offs explicit; endnotes and further reading support evaluation.

Academic evaluation

Faculty can enquire about inspection copies and currently available teaching materials.

How resource access works

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