Editorial: Operations management and collaboration in agri-food supply chains

The food industry is one of the largest industries in the world, partly local, partly global, sometimes manual, sometimes highly automated, including individual food producers or processors, and companies from small to multinational. In recent years the food industry has begun to receive more attention from the academic community in the areas of operations and supply chain management. This special issue came about following key research meetings - the EURO-2018 Special Session on “Advances in Agribusiness” in Valencia, Spain, July 2018, the PRO-VE-2018 Special Session on “Cognitive Systems in Food and Agribusiness Value Chains” in Cardiff, UK, September 2018. An agri-food supply chain can be also considered as a complex network where a variety of actors interact to make the right decisions in order to achieve end customer requirements. These challenges span several agriculture dimensions. Natural resources such as water, soil and nutrients are currently under stress, and weather conditions are becoming more volatile and uncertain, with adverse effects on agri-food supply chains. It is difficult to visualise and understand the interrelations amongst constraints and challenges from every dimension, hence it is difficult to predict future behaviours in order to mitigate unexpected conditions and their effect across the agriculture chain