Is it possible to build an inclusive carrot supply chain to meet modern market demand? Lessons learned from agribusiness cluster development in Indonesia

The growth of the modern retail market in Indonesia has increased the demand for high-quality vegetables with competitive prices. Carrot is one of the most popular vegetables for the modern retail market. However, due to local producers' inability to meet demand, the supply is still dominated by importers. Indonesian farmers produce carrots through traditional farming. However, in meeting the modern market demand, they are faced with hindrances such as limited economic scale, scarcity of high-quality seeds, and scattered production land. Modern retail market consumers require the continuous availability of local carrots with high quality and a price as cheap as that of the imported product. An effort to build a supply chain which involves small farmers (inclusive) and collaboration among local government, the central bank, a local university, and a modern retail market led to the founding of an agribusiness cluster of high-value vegetables in Pangalengan, West Java. Within the cluster, carrot is one of the commodities for which a supply chain was developed from seed to distribution to marketing. The question is, then, will this effort be able to build an inclusive supply chain that can satisfy modern market demand? In order to answer this question, a system dynamic approach is used in this paper to discuss the complexity and causality that happened in the development of an inclusive carrot supply chain. The development of the inclusive carrot supply chain is divided into five units: seed development, cultivation, capacity management, logistics, and market. All units interact and give feedback to each other so that the inclusive carrot supply chain system is able to meet the modern market requirements.