Analysis on the stability and evolutionary trend of the symbiosis system in the supply chain of fresh agricultural products.

• Main Authors: Baofeng Sun, Mingyang Ma, Yan Li, Lili Zheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2020-01-01
• Series: PLoS ONE
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0236334

In order to increase the stability of fresh agricultural product supply chain, farmers and enterprises need to evolve into a symbiotic system of supply chain. At the present stage, symbiotic relations and evolutionary trends in a symbiotic system for fresh agricultural product supply chains lack quantitative methods for determining symbiotic criteria. In the sense of quantification -oriented criteria, symbiotic systems for fresh agricultural product supply chains are defined, and an improved stationary state analysis method is proposed. Three key steps in this method are quantifying a symbiotic energy model with an evaluation model of ecological carrying capacity, setting up a system evolution model based on the logistic growth function, and verifying the symbiotic system's singularity and phase transition boundary by Lyapunov indirect method. MATLAB numerical simulation shows that types of singularity and the phase transition boundary of symbiotic system are divided effectively. And in both conditions, infinite exponential growth and convergence to steady state, the mutualism mode is the optimal choice for the symbiotic system we defined, symbiotic relations between farmers and cooperative companies are stable and long-term at this time. Those conclusions provide a reference approach to enhance the overall prospective benefits to the fresh agricultural products supply chain.