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Top1. Introduction
Approximately 150 million households around the globe are engaged in milk production. Milk provides relatively quick returns for small-scale producers and is an essential source of cash income. In this sector, in the last three decades, world milk production has increased by more than 50 percent, from 500 million tons in 1983 to 769 million tons in 2013 (FAO, 2016).
However, some links in the dairy production chain have technological limitations and management lack, among these, the producer stands out since it has suffered the consequences linked to the new market exigencies (Godinho and Carvalho, 2017). In this sense, highlight the poor hygienic and sanitary habits of the producers, due to the qualification lack and the producers’ awareness (Lange et al., 2016, Marcon et al., 2017).
According to Alencar et al. (2001), in the milk agribusiness, there are typical market situations of imperfect competition, in which the companies that work in the upstream (input suppliers) and downstream (dairy industry) agroindustry system sectors are few, organized in associations of interests, which interact with a broad, heterogeneous and dispersed group of producers. This condition is detrimental to dairy producers’ gains, as well as the economic sustainability of small dairy farms (Hailu et al., 2017).
Given the above, it is verified that there is a need for better management among the dairy ecosystem players, so that the whole System develops, by mitigating the dairy sector barriers. For Bonamigo et al. (2016a), the applied business ecosystem concept in dairy production allows encouraging innovation and cooperation between the players that make up the dairy ecosystem so that the development be driven.
In this sense, to identify the key factors to develop the dairy system, from the business ecosystem concept perspective, Bonamigo (2017a) showed six key factors that contribute to this sector development using a theoretical framework. Figure 1.
Figure 1. Dairy production key-factors booster framework
According Moore (1993), Winn and Pogutz (2013) and Annanperä et al. (2015), the business ecosystem concept, allows the interaction among several players that make up the milk business environment, among them: prefectures, government, research institutes, governmental institutions, producers, cooperatives of producers and universities, that in a cooperative way create value in the dairy business ecosystem, and together they develop.
Additionally, advantages are generated for the cooperating actors, among them the knowledge and resources behavior (Bonamigo et al., 2017).
Moore (1993) defined the business ecosystem as an economic community supported by a foundation of interacting organizations and individuals—the organisms of the business world.
The economic community produces value goods and services for customers, who are themselves, ecosystem members. Over time, they co-evolve their capabilities and roles and tend to align themselves with the directions set by one or more central companies (Alizadeh et al., 2017).
For dairy production drivers, showed for Bonamigo (2017a), a brief description is shown in Table 1.
Table 1. Description of dairy production key factors
However, for dairy activity to continue to grow and meet the world’s population needs, some obstacles must be overcome. Based on the literature Bonamigo et al. (2016b) identified from the perspective business ecosystem concept four barriers that limit this sector development, Figure 2.