Agribusiness, Sustainable Development and CSR (Agribusiness)

Over the past decades, increasing agricultural knowledge and numerous innovation systems in the agribusiness have ensured that the international food system provides adequate supplies of food for an always growing population. Beyond this central role played by the sector in food security, agribusiness has also contributed to the global economic development and the worldwide poverty alleviation by being and remaining one of the main industrial sectors. However, and as a result of the increasing awareness of environmental threats and of food safety combined with the agribusiness digitalisation from production to processing and to retail, all the processes and infrastructures involved in the globalised food system witness rapid transformations and new constraints raising simultaneously new challenges and opportunities.

Agribusiness at a glance

Area of expertise
Agribusiness, sustainable development and CSR

Creation date
May 2018

Research centre director
Guillaume Bagnarosa is a Professor of Finance at Rennes School of Business, where he heads the Agribusiness area of excellence. He worked for 15 years in the research departments of several hedge funds and investment banks in Paris and London. He is a research associate at INRAe’s SMART laboratory. Professor Bagnarosa holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Ambition of the centre
The Agribusiness Research Centre advances knowledge of agri-food systems by conducting research into consumer behaviour, risk management and innovative production models. The centre strengthens the school’s links with the local economy in an area of vital importance to the region. By encouraging innovation and resilience, we aim to ensure a sustainable and secure future for food production in our country and around the world.

Associated or derived Rennes SB courses
Master 2 in Strategic Transition Management

Academic partnerships
Wageningen University and Research, Institut Agro, ESA.

Corporate and institutional partnerships
Eureden, Avril, Norac, Roullier, INRAe.

3 key figures

Approximately €1M in external research funding from local and national institutions (Rennes Métropole, ANR, ANRT, etc.);
5 CIFRE theses funded by major companies in the agri-food industry;
13 professors from Rennes SB are involved in the research centre.

Distinctive feature
Two former Rennes SB MSc students, Morgane Loquen and Thibaud Garnier, obtained their French PhDs in 2024 following Rennes SB’s fully-funded PhD programme in agri-food.

Research axes

Agricultural Engineering and Risk Management

This theme focuses on the modeling of risk in agribusinesses. Two risk dimensions are studied in this research theme: the commodities markets prices fluctuations and the climate risk. Their potential impact on the supply chain and the agribusiness companies’ performances will be estimated and the hedging strategies for reducing it considered.

Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior

This research specializes in food consumption research, i.e. social and cultural aspects of consumption (food trends, food and retailing behaviours) and contexts (such as tourism), psychological issues (attitudes, decision making…) and digital influences on food consumption (food apps, food porn…). This theme includes consumer related food research topics with a clear positioning around the strengths of the Brittany region and the competencies of Rennes SB researchers.

Innovating in Agribusiness

This research focuses on the three aspects of the inputs, the processes, and the outcomes of innovating in agribusiness. Ten topics have been selected because of the current relevance in the innovation management literature: (i) Input for innovating in agribusiness (knowledge dynamics, knowledge transfers, and firms’ knowledge-based view in agribusiness); (ii) Innovation ecosystem in agribusiness; (iii) Business Model Innovation in agribusiness); (iv) Processes for innovating in agribusiness (Multi-level Organizational, team, and individual ambidexterity in agribusiness; (v) Absorptive and desorptive capacity in agribusiness; (vi) Outside-in and inside-out open Innovation in agribusiness; (vii) Innovative strategic alliances in agribusiness; (viii) Outcomes from innovating in agribusiness (Radical/incremental innovation in agribusiness; (ix) Disruptive/ sustaining innovation in agribusiness; (x) Innovation performance in agribusiness). All those topics are currently requiring further research in innovation management. In particular, we note the absence of empirical studies in agribusiness, in contrast to other industries, such has the semi-conductor, cars, and knowledge intensive business services.

Sustainable & Responsible Agribusiness

Investigate “agricultural externalities”, that is, agriculture’s positive and negative externalities stemming from and geared towards three main stakeholders: (i) organizations, for instance work organizations such as cooperatives and businesses or societal organizations such governmental agencies, (ii) humans, such as peasants or consumers, and (iii) non-humans such as land or animals.

Members

Research themes

Associate professor

Claire-Lise ACKERMANN: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
Ricardo AZAMBUJA: Sustainable & Responsible Agribusiness
Guillaume BAGNAROSA (research affiliate INRAe – (UMR SMART) Agricultural Policy and Operations Engineering
Laurence FORT-RIOCHE: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
Youenn LOHEAC (Research associate): Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
Sheila MATSON BARKAT: Agri-Food & Consumer Behavior
Laurent SCARINGELLA: Innovating in Agribusiness

Senior Lecturer

Shubho CHAKRABORTY: Innovating in Agribusiness

PhD students

Thibaud Garnier
Romain Menier
Michaël Pouliquen

Publications

Espinosa, R. & Azambuja, R. (2024). Perceived Benefits of Plant-Based Diets. Revue d’économie politique, 134, 285-328. https://doi.org/10.3917/redp.342.0157
Kapoor, P.S., Balaji, M.S. and Jiang, Y. (2023) Greenfluencers as agents of social change: the effectiveness of sponsored messages in driving sustainable consumption, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 57 No. 2, 2023, pp. 533-561
Jishnu Bhattacharyya, M.S. Balaji, Yangyang Jiang (2023) Causal complexity of sustainable consumption: Unveiling the equifinal causes of purchase intentions of plant-based meat alternatives. Journal of Business Research, Volume 156, 113511
Gao, S., Bagnarosa, G., Peters, G. W., Ames, M., & Matsui, T. (2023). A Dynamic Stochastic Integrated Climate–Economic Spatiotemporal Model for Agricultural Insurance Products. North American Actuarial Journal, 1-30.
Zhou, X., Bagnarosa, G., Gohin, A., Pennings, J. M., & Debie, P. (2023). Microstructure and high-frequency price discovery in the soybean complex. Journal of Commodity Markets, 30, 100314
Agi Maher, Xinghao Yan, Hazir Oncu (2023) Piling and Discounting Perishable Products: Optimal Replenishment and Discounting Policy for Perishable Products when Demand depends on the Inventory-level and the Price. European Journal of Industrial Engineering 10.1504/EJIE.2024.10053955
Romain Menier, Guillaume Bagnarosa & Alexandre Gohin (2023) On the dependence structure of European vegetable oil markets, Applied Economics, DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2023.2275220
Bagnarosa, G., Cummins, M., Dowling, M., & Kearney, F. (2022). Commodity risk in European dairy firms. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 49(1), 151-181.
Chédotal C., Lohéac Y. (2022). Comment les nudges influencent les comportements alimentaires?, in Crié D., Gallopel-Morvan K. (eds) Marketing social et nudges, Editions E.M.S., (pp.175-182)
Conlon, T., Cotter, J., Eyiah-Donkor, E. (2022) The illusion of oil return predictability: The choice of data matters!, Journal of Banking & Finance, Volume 134, 2022, 106331
Gao, S., Bagnarosa, G., Dowling, M., Matkovskyy, R., & Tawil, D. (2022). Price transmission in European fish markets. Applied Economics, 54(19), 2194-2213.
Matson-Barkat, S., Robert-Demontrond, P., & Otnes, C. (2022). From plate to place: the role of restaurant servicescapes in the development of tourists’ place meanings in Brittany, France. Tourism Recreation Research, 47(3), 316-331.
Nouira, I., Hammami, R., Arias, A. F., Gondran, N., & Frein, Y. (2022). Olive oil supply chain design with organic and conventional market segments and consumers’ preference to local products. International Journal of Production Economics, 247, 108456.
Teichert, T., Wörfel, P., & Ackermann, C. L. (Forthcoming). Casual snacking as an automatic process: a grounded cognition framework. British Food Journal.
Tisserand, J. C., Hopfensitz, A., Blondel, S., Loheac, Y., Mantilla, C., Mateu, G., … & Sutan, A. (2022). Management of common pool resources in a nation-wide experiment. Ecological Economics, 201, 107566.
Cragg, T., & McNamara, T. (2021). Mechanized zones in food regional distribution centres: a sustainability case study. Sustainable and Green Supply Chains Case Study Collection, Kogan Page Publishers, ISBN 978-1789668216.
de Kervenoael, R., Schwob, A., Hasan, R., & Ting, Y. S. (2021). Consumers’ perceived value of healthier eating: A SEM analysis of the internalisation of dietary norms considering perceived usefulness, subjective norms, and intrinsic motivations in Singapore. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 20(3), 550-563.
Espinosa, R., & Stoop, J. (2021). Do people really want to be informed? Ex-ante evaluations of information-campaign effectiveness. Experimental Economics, 24(4), 1131-1155.
Espinosa, R., & Treich, N. (2021). Animal welfare: Antispeciesism, veganism and a “life worth living”. Social Choice and Welfare, 56(3), 531-548.
Espinosa, R., & Treich, N. (2021). Moderate versus radical NGOs. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 103(4), 1478-1501.
Truong, Y., Mazloomi, H., & Berrone, P. (2021). Understanding the impact of symbolic and substantive environmental actions on organizational reputation. Industrial Marketing Management, 92, 307-320.
Hudson, S., Moore Mangin, A. (2021) Ecoshamps: Tackling the Plastics Challenge. The Case Center, 721-0041-1, 3 June 2021, Emerald.
La Rocca, A., & Snehota, I. (2021). Mobilizing suppliers when starting up a new business venture. Industrial Marketing Management, 93, 401-412.
Moore Mangin, A., Hudson, S. (2021) How can agriculture attract, retain and protect Migrant workers during a World Health Crisis. The Case Center 421-0090-1 , 7 October 2021, Emerald.
Schneckenberg, D., Benitez, J., Klos, C., Velamuri, V. K., & Spieth, P. (2021). Value creation and appropriation of software vendors: A digital innovation model for cloud computing. Information & Management, 58(4), 103463.
Siddique, M. A., Akhtaruzzaman, M., Rashid, A., & Hammami, H. (2021). Carbon disclosure, carbon performance and financial performance: International evidence. International Review of Financial Analysis, 75, 101734.
Ames, M., Bagnarosa, G., Matsui, T., Peters, G. W., & Shevchenko, P. V. (2020). Which risk factors drive oil futures price curves?. Energy Economics, 87, 104676.
Baraldi, E., La Rocca, A., Perna, A., & Snehota, I. (2020). Connecting IMP and entrepreneurship research: Directions for future research. Industrial Marketing Management, 91, 495-509.
Cornée, S., Le Guernic, M., & Rousselière, D. (2020). Governing common-property assets: Theory and evidence from agriculture. Journal of Business Ethics, 166(4), 691-710.
Hernandez, J. A., Uddin, G. S., Dutta, A., Ahmed, A., & Kang, S. H. (2020). Are ethanol markets globalized or regionalized?. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 551, 124094.
Goswami, M., De, A., Habibi, M. K. K., & Daultani, Y. (2020). Examining freight performance of third-party logistics providers within the automotive industry in India: An environmental sustainability perspective. International Journal of Production Research, 58(24), 7565-7592.
Lohéac, Y. (2020). Hunger and intertemporal decisions: Experimental literature and empirical illustration. Revue Economique, 71(1), 195-207.
Marowka, M., Peters, G. W., Kantas, N., & Bagnarosa, G. (2020). Factor‐augmented Bayesian cointegration models: a case‐study on the soybean crush spread. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series C (Applied Statistics), 69(2), 483-500.

Activities and news

Research seminars

QMCM (Quantitative Modelling in Commodity Markets) meeting every two weeks. Research seminars are jointly organised with INRAe.
Following our joint agreement with INRAe, the members of the agribusiness research center are participating to the weekly Agricultural Economics research seminars of the INRAe in Rennes.

Research workshops

Jointly with the CUT: Conference on Agribusiness and Sustainable Agriculture (CASA) twice a year.

Conferences

During the Affi 2022 (French Association in Finance): we organised a Round table and a Special Session on Agri-finance with guest speakers from Avril Group, INRAe, ESSEC and FAO.
Jointly with the CUT: Rennes SB Summit.

PhD service

Rennes SB PhD (Food Economics + Advanced Qualitative Methods 2 x 30h).
Four CIFRE Doctoral scholarships with Avril group, Saipol, Norac, Eureden and the UMR SMART (INRAe – Institut Agro).
1 Post-doc position co-funded with the INRAe.
Grant for the LINCONIAA Project.

Contact

Dr Guillaume Bagnarosa, Director of Agribusiness