DIRECTIONS FOR ENSURING THE COMPETITIVENESS OF AGRI-FOOD ENTERPRISES IN UNCERTAIN CONDITIONS

Abstract

This article presents the author’s perspective on approaches to ensuring enterprises' competitive positions in the agri-food sector, which may serve as a basis for further development of strategic policy documents to support the sector’s growth.

The study aims to identify strategic factors and promising directions to ensure the competitiveness of enterprises in Ukraine’s agri-food sector amid the uncertainty of the post-war situation. Based on an abstract-logical approach, the processes and phenomena that determine the current and future states of the internal and external environments of agri-food enterprises, as well as their advantages and opportunities in competitive environments, were generalized. The study was based on scientific works by leading researchers, analytical publications, and the authors’ personal observations.

It has been determined that the most important factors shaping future trends in the development of agri-food markets and the strategies of leading producers are as follows: changes in the geography of production and sales of agricultural and food products and the transformation of global supply chains; the digital transformation of production and sales processes; the formation of a circular economy based on the principles of sustainable development; and horizontal and vertical business integration, particularly the formation of networked production and distribution structures.

It is argued that the key to ensuring competitive advantage for enterprises in the agri-food sector lies in integrating small and medium-sized producers into networked associations. Combining the concepts of digitalization, the circular economy, and networked organization of the agri-food business will allow for increased resource and economic efficiency in production, strengthen marketing and sales activities, and, on this basis, ensure the competitive positions of producers in the strategic long term