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

这个项目培训一名研究生进行基于经验的科学研究的方法，询问不断加强的自由贸易协定对个人、公司和环境的影响。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，该协定被誉为美国“转向亚洲”贸易政策的核心。自由贸易消除了关税和配额等贸易壁垒，向国际竞争开放了当地产业。这些经济政策的发展影响到全球农业生产者和日常消费者的生活和生计，无论是在发达国家还是发展中国家。它们决定了消费者可以获得的产品种类，塑造了企业运营和相互联系的方式，并决定了当地的农业实践。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业的发展，这种产业具有双重作用，一方面使人们更容易获得负担得起的粮食，另一方面又促进了一种单一作物种植文化(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)。单一栽培还放大了植物物种的遗传缩小，创造出在生物学上更容易受到疾病和商业灭绝影响的作物。这项研究的数据将有助于组织、官员和科学家致力于确定食品生产中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、社区支持的农业、有机农业、食品合作社等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。该项目将通过对菲律宾和日本之间成功的替代贸易模式的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，该供应链支持以单一种植园为主的景观中的农业生物多样性，并鼓励所有相关利益攸关方的公民参与。为了从头开始了解供应链管理和物流，它将涉及在菲律宾的生产、加工、包装和运输地点，到东京和日本福冈的分销、营销和消费地点的身临其境的研究。它将特别关注利益相关者如何操纵最近贸易政策的变化，如TPP。为了分析与供应链每个节点相关的影响，该项目将使用生命周期评估(ISO140140)，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.