Cut, cooled, packed, transported and traded all over the world, flowers represent a showcase of a worldwide integrated trade-logistics system. As one of the most perishable, vulnerable and time-critical products, speed is everything in harvesting, moving and trading of flowers. In the international trade of flowers and logistics of florticulture products, the Netherlands is the largest center of trade and logistics of flowers, taking a share of more than 40% in global cut flower export volume. When COVID-19 hit the world, this ever-moving system came to a full stop. What did this mean for the trade and logistics system? Which players were hit most? Did the crises change the system, just interrupt it or has it set the stage for developments already under way to strengthen and accelerate? This chapter presents and discusses the international position of the Dutch trade-logistics system as the most dynamic part of a worldwide flower industry. It sketches key trends in the industry over the last decade and draws a line towards possible post-COVID-19 scenarios for the worldwide flower industry and the international position of the Netherlands. The Dutch flower industry has shown incredible resilience to the external shock of COVID-19, but the crisis also has uncovered some weaknesses of the international flower industry. However, the chapter concludes that it is unlikely that these weaknesses will change the direction of developments in the sector, some of which already started to take shape in the 1970s. The chapter is based on pre-COVID-19 research and literature on the trade-logistics hub of the Netherlands, an analysis of trade and logistics data from around 2000 up to the first months of 2021, and existing economic scenarios for the flower industry and world trade.
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Background: Revealing tacit knowledge often is seen as very valuable for organizations, although it is usually challenging to enunciate and share this type of knowledge. Methods: This study uses a participatory design and the application of a board gaming simulation as instruments to extract tacit knowledge. To illustrate this application, the gaming simulation is played with entrepreneurs from horticulture. Horticulture represents a complex social system where tacit knowledge plays a major role in the trade process. A participatory design process is used to explore whether the design and play of gaming simulations enable participants to explicate their tacit knowledge. Participants’ participation in designing the gaming simulation explicated that reconstructing reality was a prerequisite for their commitment. Results: The results from playing simulation sessions show that participants were able to: (1) narrow down the anecdotic behaviour to a few factors; (2) to structure these factors; (3) explore how these factors relate to trade barriers and (4) to explain which tactics are applied to foster trade. Conclusion: The educational value of this study is that it helped entrepreneurs in understanding complex real-life situations.
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From the article: "This article evaluates the application of blockchain technology to improve organic or fair-trade food traceability from “Farm to Fork” in light of European regulations. This study aims to shed light on the challenges in the organic food chain to overcome, the drivers for blockchain technology, and the challenges in current projects."
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