State agricultural university MBA (ABM) admission · India · State agricultural universities via ICAR AIEEA-PG Group 19
Original practice questions written to the published syllabus · not past papersSeeing the whole chain of actors that add value to a food product, what drives it, who governs it and how producers can upgrade within it.
In the exams: agribusiness management PhD entrance and fellowship examinations (present)
How our questions for State agricultural university MBA admission spread across the units of Agri Value Chain Management. Difficulty: 22 easy, 7 medium, 0 hard.
| External drivers: population and income | 5 | |
| Value-chain mapping | 5 | |
| Global food systems | 3 | |
| Value-chain actors | 3 | |
| The role of the consumer | 3 | |
| Value-chain governance | 3 | |
| Value-chain thinking compared with supply-chain thinking | 2 | |
| Agri-food market dynamics | 2 | |
| Upgrading in value chains | 2 | |
| External drivers: climate and technology | 1 |
Choose an answer, then open the working. Each explanation says why the right answer is right and why the others are not.
A mango packhouse discards 6 percent of fruit at sorting because of bruising before the fruit is dispatched to retailers. Under FAO definitions this is:
B. Food loss, since it occurs before retail
FAO defines food loss as a decrease in quantity or quality from harvest up to but not including retail; food waste occurs at retail, food service and household level. Being thrown away does not make it waste in the FAO sense; the stage decides. FAO counts losses from harvest up to, but not including, the retail stage as food loss.
Of 1,000 kg of tomatoes harvested, 10 percent is lost between the farm and the wholesale market, and 5 percent of what reaches the wholesale market is lost before it is sold to retailers. What percentage of the harvest is lost before retail?
D. 14.5%
Losses compound: 1,000 × 0.90 = 900 kg reach the wholesaler; 900 × 0.95 = 855 kg are sold on. Loss = (1,000 − 855)/1,000 = 14.5%. Adding the two rates (15%) ignores that the second loss applies to a smaller quantity. 10.0% counts only the farm-to-wholesale loss and 5.0% only the wholesale loss.
In Porter's value chain, a feed company's advisers visiting dairy farms after sale to help farmers use its feed correctly is an example of which primary activity?
C. Service
Porter's five primary activities are inbound logistics, operations, outbound logistics, marketing and sales, and service. After-sale support is service. Procurement and technology development are support activities, not primary ones.
A household's income rises from 20,000 to 25,000 CU a month and its food spending from 10,000 to 11,500 CU. What is the income elasticity of food spending (percentage change method)?
D. 0.60
Food spending rises by 15% and income by 25%, so elasticity = 15/25 = 0.60. Inverting the ratio gives 1.67; 0.15 is the proportional change in food spending alone; 0.46 is the new food budget share (11,500/25,000). An elasticity below one with a falling budget share (50% to 46%) is Engel's law in action.
A commission agent at a regulated market arranges sales between farmers and buyers for a percentage fee, never taking ownership of the produce. In value-chain mapping the agent is best classified as:
A. A supporting actor, because it does not own the product or bear its price risk
Core or direct actors own the product at some stage; supporting actors provide services without ownership. The enabling environment covers laws, policies, infrastructure and norms, not individual firms.
A market with many small sellers and only a few large buyers, where buyers can pay below the competitive price, is described as:
A. Oligopsony
Oligopsony is few buyers; oligopoly is few sellers. The 'hourglass' shape of many agri-food chains, with few firms in the middle, raises oligopsony concerns at the farm gate.
In contract farming, 'side-selling' means:
C. Farmers selling contracted produce to other buyers when spot prices are higher, sometimes leaving advances unpaid
Side-selling, or extra-contractual marketing, is the main risk to firms in contract farming, especially where inputs were advanced on credit and courts are slow.
A dairy cooperative that previously sold raw milk begins making and selling cheese. In Humphrey and Schmitz's typology this is primarily:
B. Product upgrading
Moving into a more sophisticated, higher-value product is product upgrading. If the cooperative also took on distribution and branding functions previously done by others, that element would be functional upgrading.
As a household's income rises from 20,000 to 25,000 CU a month, its food spending rises from 10,000 to 11,500 CU. What happens to the budget share of food, and which law does this illustrate?
C. It falls from 50% to 46%, illustrating Engel's law
Share before = 10,000/20,000 = 50%; after = 11,500/25,000 = 46%. Absolute food spending rose but the share fell: Engel's law. Bennett's law concerns the share of calories from starchy staples, not the budget share of food.
Which actor in a milk value chain is a core (direct) actor?
C. A private dairy that buys milk from farmers and sells packaged milk
Core actors own the product at some stage. The bank and university are supporting actors; the regulator is part of the enabling environment.
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