1.5 Research Objectives

The main objective of this research is to investigate the impact of various types of risk and risk mitigation strategies in agricultural supply chain performance in Ghana. In dealing with supply chain risk management in any field of study，it will be of great importance to look in-depth into the definitions of risk，supply chain risk and agricultural supply chain risk. Next is to identify and enquire risk probability，severity and the managerial abilities of the risk partaking in the field of studies. Hence to achieve these objectives，a case study is first adopted to answer the following questions：

1. What kind of risk sources should be considered in agricultural supply chain management？

2. What are the existing supply chain risk probabilities in the agricultural supply chain in Ghana？

3. What are the risk severity levels in the agricultural supply chain？

4. What level of effective managerial/control abilities do the participants in the chain have over these risks？

After identifying these risks and participants’ managerial abilities of the risk，it will be prudent to understand how these risks correlate with each other. Also an empirical investigation of the relationship between a set of identified agricultural risk in the agricultural supply chain in Ghana and its significant influence on supply chains’ performance could help the chain participants in managing risk associated with the supply chain operations.

To achieve this，by means of survey，this research tries to answer the following questions additionally.

5. How do the identified supply chain risk correlate with each other？

6. How do the identified supply chain risk influence the overall performance of the agricultural supply chain in Ghana？

It is essential to seek risk mitigation strategies and their impact on supply chain performance after risk identification，assessment and evaluation. To address this importance，this book will further answer following questions：

7. What are the existing risk mitigation strategies in the agricultural supply chain？

8. How do these risk mitigation strategies impact on the agricultural supply chain performance？

The research framework is displayed in the following Figure 1-1 below.

Figure 1-1 Research framework