Value chain analysis – a capstone opportunity for postgraduate agribusiness education

Management education demands educational activities that synthesize discipline specific knowledge with the ability to apply this knowledge in the real world. Management education broadly applied to commercial horticulture and agribusiness contexts generally requires a capstone phase in which students with an appropriate academic foundation develop deeper insights into their respective industries of interest. This paper outlines some methods or tools suited for agribusiness industry wide or enterprise level study which include value chain approaches. A critical academic task is to ensure that the skill development and foundation knowledge to undertake the capstone study is explicit. With limited resources and time, project design for capstone projects frequently trades what is possible against what is "do-able".