Jordaan, Daniel Du Plessis ScheepersKirsten, Johann F.2020-07-312020-07-312019Jordaan, D.P.S. & Kirsten, J.F. 2019, 'Measuring the fragility of agribusiness value chains: a case study of the South African lamb chain', International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 137-154.1559-2448 (online)1096-7508 (print)10.22434/IFAMR2017.0103http://hdl.handle.net/2263/75523The ability to determine the fragility of agribusiness value chains is valuable to agribusiness management practitioners and scholars in a context where risk and uncertainty are increasingly pervasive, consequential and unpredictable. The paper argues for determining the fragility of a chain to adverse events rather than trying to predict the probability and impact of such events. The paper specifically proposes a framework to detect and quantify non-linear consequences in response to progressively deteriorating chain fragility factors. The paper’s approach is a novel alternative to the traditional value chain ‘risk assessment’. Application of the framework to the South African lamb chain reveals that a number of specific factors, like quality and safety performance and cash flow position, have consistently high fragility scores throughout the chain while some factors are uniquely localized to a specific role-player or activity, which highlights the techno-economic uniqueness of individual activities in a chain.en© 2018 The Author(s). This article is distributed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 South Africa (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 ZA).Agribusiness riskChain riskUncertaintyChain fragilityArticle