Overview

Identifying a particular stakeholder in a particular commodity chain, students imagine they have been commissioned to research, analyse and advise on a particular problem facing these stakeholders.The Commodity Report Proposal (A1 15%) and Stakeholder Report (A3 50%) are linked assessments that build on each other.The A1 Proposal provides an opportunity for early feedback on the development and refinement of your research, ideas, sources, and research questions. You should consider this feedback in preparing in your final A3 Report.The final report should demonstrate your engagement with the subject concepts and themes, the ability to obtain and communicate high quality statistical data, and to conduct independent research and analysis.

 Picking a commodityYou need to pick a commodity and research its supply chain. Commodities might be:

●Mineral-based commodities, such as gold, diamonds, iron, steel, aluminium, cobalt, coltan, lithium, nickel, silicon (eg. minerals used in renewable energy technology).

●Conflict minerals and precious stones, such as 'blood diamonds' or 'blood minerals'.

● Fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas) and derivatives (plastic, motor oil).

●Biologically based, like palm oil, olive oil, coffee, timber, quinoa, furs, leather, beef, tuna, caviar, cotton (clothing items), corn (eg. genetically modified varieties patented by Monsanto).

● A specific product, like a specific clothing producer in a fast fashion supply chain. You could also look at AFL Sherrins or Rugby balls, or similar. Don't pick something like a larger product like an iPhone as it is made up of a large number of components. Instead pick one of those components or production minerals like silicon (this video details some of the components: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/13/inside-apple-iphone-where-parts-and-mate rials-come-from.html

●(Links to an external site

●ou may consider standardised commodities which are priced and traded on Chicago and London exchanges (crude oil, wheat etc) or ‘black market’ illegal commodity chains (heroin, cocaine, rhino horn, pangolin scales).

● You may even consider transboundary trade in human tissues – eg. oocytes (human female eggs) which are sold by people in poorer countries to IVF clinics and medical research labs in richer ones.

The commodity must be one that is produced and/or traded ‘globally’ (e.g. across national borders).You shouldn’t choose a highly complex commodity like an iPhone, Toyota Hilux, or Tesla battery which has numerous inputs, but you can choose a component such as coltan, steel, or lithium — which is central to the production of these items etc. Similarly, you should not choose a final beauty product like a lipstick as your commodity, but you can choose an input like mica, or palm oil and talk about the supply chain for the input.You will research that commodity chain from original site of extraction to point of sale and through to waste — say from mining coltan in Democratic Republic of Congo, shipping it to refineries and electronics factories in China, sale of ICT devices in (say) Australia, and what happens to e-waste heavy metals when the phones are discarded.

NEED HELP? If you are at all unsure of the suitability of your choice, discuss it with your tutor.

Choosing a stakeholder

You will take on a role of a researcher or consultant engaged to investigate the supply chain. You choose a specific stakeholder, which can be one of the following:

●A government department or global agency like the International Labor Organisation

●A trade union or a NGO that you identify, who have an interest in the supply chain

● A NGO that you invent for this task. It is ok to do this where you want to create a report for a group or workers of local community, for example, and there is not yet an NGO you are aware of.You conduct your research and write the report as if they have engaged you to do this work, and you were doing the tasks in this assessment for them.

For example:

●  Are you hired by a government department to provide policy advice on the future of a particular industry?

●Have you been engaged by a global NGO to analyse and report on human rights, such as child labour or violence toward local people from security guards at a mine site?

●Have you been asked by a trade union to investigate labour issues in a supply chain?

● Is a community law centre requesting your help to investigate legal reforms to assist local farmers to secure their land rights?

●Are you hired by an environmental or climate justice organisation to investigate deforestation, overfishing, pollution?The stakeholder can be a real body (a government department, union, or not for profit organisation) or one you invent for the purposes of the assessment.If you use an actually existing organisation concerned about that commodity’s supply chain you can use their reports to assist in developing a new angle, research question or application for their work. That said, you must build on this research and demonstrate independent analysisIn the lipstick example above, where you are investigating the component mica, your stakeholder could be:

● A labour organisation or union.

●  An Indigenous group whose forest rights are threatened by palm oil demand

● An environmental campaign group concerned about deforestation and species extinction (eg. orangutangs).

Step 2: Submit Commodity Report Proposal (Assessment 1) to Canvas, in Week 4, by 11.59pm on Sunday 3 September.

The proposal should be 750 words (not incl. references) and contain the following elements of your project:

●Working title of report, identifying the commodity and stakeholder.

●Research questions you are investigating and how you are doing that (research method).

●Brief outline of your report structure (see the final report example at the end of this document for a sense of what you need to produce – use similar headings as a guide to organizing the proposal)

● A reference list of relevant academic and other sources you have found and are intending to use (approx. 12-15, this is not included in the word limit).

●Any questions/difficulties you have in relation to your report, so feedback can be provided.

Step 3: Incorporate feedback on the proposal into your research and seek feedback from your tutor if you are not sure about something. Complete the Module 2 data lab topics to ensure you produce a high quality report.

Step 4: Submit Stakeholder Report (Assessment 3) to Canvas in the final Assessment Period, by 11.59pm on Sunday 12 November. 2000 words (not including the reference list, in text citations, tables and graphs).

Note: the final A3 report can incorporate your work from A1, including whole sentences. This is usually not allowed as it is self plagiarism, but A1 and A3 and building blocks of the same project on this occasion.

 Referencing

A1 PROPOSAL

In the proposal, you should include academic and other sources you intend to use. We suggest 12-15 at this stage of your research. You do not have to cite all of these in the text itself, you can just list them at the end. These sources will usually be a mix of scholarly sources and other sources, such as reports by government bodies or NGOs and investigative news articles. For the non-scholarly sources use discretion, and make sure you select high quality items with robust research or data.

A3 REPOR

In the final report, the reference list should only include sources you have used directly in the report or quoted from (using in text citations as you would do for an essay).

Please reference using APA style

 Example A3 Stakeholder Report Contents

 Title: Labour Standards in the Almond Growing Industry in California (USA). State your title clearly at beginning of your Report.

Stakeholder: United Farm Workers Union. Clearly identify your Stakeholder at beginning of your report.

Who are you? Be clear on your role in relation to the stakeholder. In this example you might be union researchers preparing a report for your organisation.

Introduction: Provide some basic information and context regarding your commodity then clearly set out the structure of your Report.

Research Questions: These will arise from a problem you identify — how have free trade treaties (i.e. NAFTA) affected working conditions in the Californian almond growing industry (e.g. wages, job security, exposure to pesticides)? What about the rights of undocumented migrants? What steps could the United Farm Workers Union take to improve conditions for workers in this industry? Does globalisation make it more difficult for unions to improve conditions? How might this be challenged at the local level and in national/international campaigns for reform?

Body of your Report (not necessarily in this order):

Background information (maybe history, current trends, overview of industry, things the reader needs for context).

●Outline of commodity chain (including a diagram can make it very clear for the reader)

●Outline of key issues: Detail the questions you will consider.

●Methodology: What approach did you take in your research? This shouldinclude any conceptual or theoretical ideas encountered in the course (eg. academic literature on political economy, development, globalization, e.g. whether your analysis is informed by and guided by your critical understanding of neoclassical, Keynesian, Marxist, feminist, or ecologicalperspectives on political economy, citing authors engaged with one or more of these traditions.

●Presentation of research data: What research and data are you using and why

●Analysis of key issues and data: Present your analysis and key findings

Key findings / Recommendations: Here you present your recommendations, conclusions etc to your Stakeholder/s, canvassing possible options for advancing their social, political, economic and environmental objectives.Reference list: All sources in the body text should be cited in a consistent referencing

in-text. All sources used in the text, and only those used, should be listed alphabetically in the bibliography/reference list according to the same style. Your research and reference list should include:

●  Scholarly sources — academic books and/or peer reviewed journal articles.

●What we call ‘grey literature’ sources — eg. government, business or NGO reports, position papers, newspaper articles etc.

● Sources for your statistics eg. World Bank, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Global Slavery Index dataset, etc.

Questions you might consider regarding issues and data for the example assignment

●Who gets what? Follow the commodity chain and try to find out who gets what and what the issues and problems are. How much do the agricultural labourers get paid? The managers? The farmers or agribusiness shareholders?

● What’s the farm gate price of almonds paid by wholesalers? Transportation costs? What do the big retailers (supermarkets etc) pay for products and how much do they charge consumers? How have these figures changed over time?

●What is the environmental impact? Are there occupational health and safety issues?

●Sources: Remember you need to draw on a wide variety of sources, including books, journal articles, government reports and statistics, reports by NGOs, professional bodies etc (always being mindful of an organisation’s potential bias).

●You need to conduct the standard searches in the library catalogue and databases, as well as targeted Google searches for government data, relevant newspaper articles, etc.

In the example of the almond growers, you might look at:

● Californian state government data (labour and industry statistics), University of California reports, find out if there is an almond growers association, food processors association, retailers association etc, international reports from the World Bank, UN Food and Agriculture Organisation, WTO etc).