## 2 Literature Review
### Agricultural Value Chain Sustainability Challenges and Mitigation Strategies  
Agriculture value chain management has challenges due to factors such as the post-COVID-19 economic effects of climate change [25], inefficiencies in farming information, difficulties in accessing markets, and unreliable access to extension services [47]. Additionally, the supply chains of food systems are a daunting task owing to the need for better control and management systems to deal with varying supply and demand fluctuations, perishables, and the tight requirements for food safety standards and sustainability goals.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c} \hline \hline
**Social Networks Applications** & **Examples** \\ \hline Information sharing & Sharing of agricultural knowledge and information between farmers [37; 38], researchers [39], and other stakeholders [39] occurs via social networks \\ \hline Networking and collaboration & Stakeholders, including farmers, traders, extension officers, and researchers—from different locations—collaborate and share resources for innovations [40] \\ \hline Market access & Farmers’ access to larger markets [41; 42] \\ \hline Access to extension services & Extension services to farmers, including weather alerts, crop management advice, and marketing tips [43; 44] \\ \hline Crowd-sourcing data & Social networks are essential for collecting data on agricultural practices, weather patterns, and market trends [45; 46] \\ \hline Economic Empowerment & Digital innovations for women’s economic empowerment [46] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 1: Applications of social networks in agricultural value chains (Authors’ analysis).  
Digitalizing the agricultural value chain is critical to resolving these management challenges of food systems. The rapidly growing world population is putting pressure on food systems, and the effects of climate change further aggravate this situation [26]. [PERSON] [8] proposed a coordination strategy to address logistical barriers to enhance food security and mitigate climate change effects by adapting IoT-enabled agriculture value chain systems. [PERSON] [8] developed a Fuzzy-TISM IoT-driven sustainable food security system, which comprises different aspects, including e-farm marketing, traceability based on blockchain technology, quality control based on sensor technologies, smart contracts, crop insurance based on mobile app services, information sharing across networks, and e-goverance in policy improvements. Other studies show that information communication technology innovations, particularly IoT, enables applications to have the potential to minimize food wastage and optimize distribution networks via a digital ecosystem, a concept referred to as digitalization [23; 48]. Digitalization is a social-technical procedure of utilizing digital innovations in scaling operations, and improving efficiency and turnaround times in performing transactions [15]. Thus, digitalization can result in minimizing the carbon emissions of the entire food supply chain. AVC digitalization can yield innovative IoT-enabled digital systems to enhance productivity, food security and supply chain management, knowledge management, and the incomes of indigenous communities that collaborate through various agricultural social networks.