Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) is offering this exciting PhD studentship for a term of 3.5 years. SRUC delivers comprehensive skills, education and business support for Scotland’s land-based industry founded on world class, sector leading research, education and consultancy. SRUC’s joint submission with the University of Edinburgh to the Agriculture, Veterinary and Food Science subpanel of the Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) ranks top in the UK on research power.

Milk quotas were introduced in 1984 to the EU dairy market to control the structural surpluses that resulted from imbalances between supply and demand for milk encouraged by subsidies to the sector. These quotas ended on the 31^st March 2015 in the midst of a trend of decreasing prices milk and increasing price volatility, leaving the sector to operate closer to free market conditions. The reaction of the European Commission (besides granting funds to mitigate the situation) has been to start discussions on approaches to help producers to reduce their exposure to market volatility (e.g., the use of dairy futures markets). However, mechanisms such as futures prices deal only with price risk and not with production uncertainties, and it is well known that farmers do not favour hedging in futures markets. In this context, the establishment of collaborative supply chains has been proved an effective tool to reduce market uncertainties; however, whilst these sort of supply chain arrangements are more common in other industries, they are still infrequent in the food and drink industry. The topic of this studentship is to explore reasons hampering the development of collaborative supply chains, focusing on the dairy sector, as it is believed that they can help in reducing farmers’ income variability. The methods to be used in the studentship are mixed (quantitative and qualitative). The quantitative part will consist of characterising income volatility that supply chain stakeholders currently face using different datasets (e.g., a milk price contracts dataset, farm accounting survey, Kantar Worldpanel database). The qualitative part will develop a survey to study the relationships along the supply chain in order to identify barriers to fostering collaborative supply chains.

Applicants should have a minimum of an upper second class honours degree or equivalent in economics, agricultural economics, marketing or supply chain management. A background in microeconomics, well developed mathematical skills, excellent computer skills, and excellent written and presentation skills are also required.  The studentship offers a stipend of £14,296 and the expected start date is October 2016. The student will be based at SRUC’s, King’s Buildings campus in Edinburgh. This studentship is funded to pay the tuition fees of UK/EU nationals only. Non UK/EU nationals must provide evidence of sufficient funds to cover the difference between the home and international student tuition fee level (approximately £14,000 per year).

Online applications for this post can be submitted via our website www.sruc.ac.uk/jobs Candidates who are unable to access the online application system can request an application pack from[email protected]  Tel 0131 535 4028 quoting reference SRUC/1030710/Revoredo. CV’s will not be accepted without a completed application form. To have an informal discussion about this studentship, contact: Dr. Cesar Revoredo-Giha, Email [email protected]

Closing date is 5pm on 1^st August 2016.