Agribusiness in Food Production and Supply Chains
This module presents the basic nutritional needs for a healthy society, and analyses the flow of food and nutrition from primary production to consumers, and finally managing food waste. It covers the geographical requirements for agriculture, the effect of global climate change on arable space, the distribution networks that bring foods to consumers locally and globally, geo-political factors that can disrupt this flow, market penetration of new products, determination of pricing based on supply and demand, and the strategies to cope with mounting food waste.
Agribusiness Risk Analysis and Management
This module covers general business risk assessment. Students will learn how to identify, mitigate and manage the risks unique to agricultural production. In addition, markets, finance, institutions and human resources relating to the industry are explored. The role of innovative insurance and new info-comm technologies and mobile media for risk management will be discussed.
Innovation, Ethics and Patent Law
Students will explore opportunities for innovation in agriculture in the areas of, automation, data analytics, genetics, breeding, distribution and marketing. Ethical issues related to foods will be discussed. Students will also learn the basics of intellectual property (IP) including the concepts of background and forward IP, types of IP and the laws governing the implementation and enforcement of IP.
Automation and Mechanisation in Agriculture
Students will learn about monitoring systems and how to incorporate and integrate digital data, feedback loops, positive and negative actuation to achieve different levels of automation. Machines including robotics that facilitate farm operations by reducing the dependency on humans will be introduced.
Agribusiness Regulations and Funding
Through this module, students will become familiar with important enablers of successful businesses – government policies, regulations, financing, human resources and
“Freedom to Operate”.The regulations governing the operations and management of agricultural business in Singapore will be reviewed. Students will also be made aware of sources of funding available from agencies like Enterprise Singapore and
AVA, and through other fund-raising platforms like cloud sourcing.
Global Logistics Management
This module covers the principles of efficient and effective management of logistics in international business. It examines aspects including purchasing and reverse logistics as well as global logistics trends and security challenges. Optimisation models for logistics decision-making and supply chain design will also be introduced.