Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Free Trade Agreements on Supply Chain Logistics

该项目旨在培养研究生进行基于实践的科学研究的方法，询问人们，企业和环境如何受到加强自由贸易协定的影响。2015年，美国、日本和其他十个太平洋国家完成了跨太平洋伙伴关系协定（TPP）的谈判，该协定被视为美国贸易政策“转向亚洲”的核心。“自由贸易消除了关税和配额等贸易壁垒，使本地工业开放参与国际竞争。经济政策的这些发展影响到地球仪各地农业生产者和日常消费者的生活和生计，包括发达国家和发展中国家。它们决定了消费者可以获得的产品种类，塑造了公司的运作方式和相互关系，并决定了实地的农业实践。这往往会对农业产生重大影响。自由贸易协定促进了大规模种植园业的发展，这具有双重效果，既可以使负担得起的粮食更广泛地获得，又可以促进单一作物种植文化（大规模种植单一作物的做法，通常需要大量使用除草剂和杀虫剂）。单一栽培还扩大了植物物种的遗传狭窄，创造出在生物学上更容易受到疾病和商业灭绝的作物。这项研究的数据将有助于组织、官员和科学家确定食品生产供应链管理的环境可持续模式。Alyssa Paredes将在耶鲁大学William Kelly博士的指导下，探索替代供应链如何发展有效和可扩展的组织结构和物流，以应对自由贸易协定的变化。近几十年来，面对贸易和农业的变化，公平贸易计划、社区支持农业、有机农业、食品合作社等都在努力支持当地工业和保护农业生物多样性。然而，在美国和其他工业化国家，这些努力一直难以扩大规模，仍然依赖于利基市场，主要迎合较高的社会阶层。本项目将通过对菲律宾和日本之间成功的替代贸易模式进行研究来调查这些问题。它将侧重于野生卡文迪什香蕉供应链，支持以单一作物种植园为主的景观的农业生物多样性，并鼓励所有相关利益攸关方的公民参与。为了从根本上了解供应链管理和物流，它将涉及在菲律宾的生产，加工，包装和运输场所，以及日本东京和福冈的分销，营销和消费场所进行沉浸式研究。它将特别关注利益相关者如何操纵最近的贸易政策变化，如TPP。为了分析与供应链每个节点有关的影响，本项目将使用生命周期评估（ISO 140140），这是一个对商品系统的投入和产出进行定量和定性评估的框架。

This project, which trains a graduate student in methods of conducting empirically-grounded scientific research, asks how people, corporations, and environments are affected by intensifying free trade agreements. In 2015, the United States, Japan, and ten other Pacific nations finalized negotiations over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), heralded as the centerpiece of U.S. trade policy's "pivot towards Asia." Free trade removes trade barriers such as tariffs and quotas, opening up local industries to international competition. These developments in economic policy impact the lives and livelihoods of agricultural producers and everyday consumers around the globe, in both developed and developing worlds. They determine the kinds of products that are available to consumers, shape the ways that corporations operate and relate to each other, and dictate agricultural practices on the ground. Often this can have significant agricultural ramifications. Free trade deals promote large-scale plantation industries, which have the dual effect of making affordable food more widely available, while promoting a culture of monocropping (the practice of growing a single crop on a very large scale, often with the intensive application of herbicides and pesticides). Monocultures also amplify the genetic narrowing of plant species, creating crops that are biologically more vulnerable to disease and commercial extinction. The data from this research will aid organizations, officials, and scientists engaged in identifying environmentally sustainable models for supply chain management in food production. Alyssa Paredes, under the supervision of Dr. William Kelly of Yale University, will explore how alternative supply chains evolve effective and scalable organizational structures and logistics in response to changes in free trade agreements. In recent decades, fair trade schemes, community-supported agriculture, organic farming, food co-ops and the like have strived to support local industries and preserve agro-biodiversity in the face of changes in trade and agriculture. In the United States and other industrial nations, however, these efforts have struggled to scale up, remaining dependent on niche markets and catering mostly to higher social classes. This project will investigate these questions through research conducted on a successful alternative trade model between the Philippines and Japan. It will focus on a wild Cavendish banana supply chain, which supports agrobiodiversity in landscapes dominated by monocropped plantations, and encourages civic participation for all the stakeholders involved. In order to understand supply chain management and logistics from the ground up, it will involve immersive research at sites for production, processing, packaging and transport in the Philippines, to sites for distribution, marketing and consumption in Tokyo and Fukuoka, Japan. It will pay particular attention to how stakeholders maneuver recent changes in trade policy, such as TPP. To analyze the impacts associated with each node of the supply chain, this project will use Life Cycle Assessment (ISO140140), a framework for the quantitative and qualitative assessment of inputs and outputs of the commodity system.