Agribusiness is a unity of business activities which include one or the whole of production chains, processing, and marketing that are related to agriculture in a broad sense, i.e. business activities that support agricultural ones, and business activities supported by agricultural ones.
As a science, agribusiness refers to a series of decision-making science, namely business science (managerial economics), management, systems science, communications science, agricultural sciences, and other supporting sciences to push agricultural production businesses (agriculture, farming, plantation, forestry, fisheries and aquaculture) in order to be accepted by target consumers. The first guide used for understanding agribusiness as a science or a specialized field of study is the work by Davis and Goldberg (1957).
The scope of Agribusiness Department covers the following:
- Procurement and distribution system of agricultural production infrastructure, technology, and resources development (up-stream agribusiness)
- Subsystems of agricultural production or farming (on-farm agribusiness)
- Subsystems of agricultural products processing or agroindustry (down-stream agribusiness)
- Subsystems of agricultural products processing and marketing
- Supporting subsystems (i.e. supporting facilities and infrastructure, and a conducive environment for agribusiness development)