Products used in agriculture can be subject to shortage due to natural disasters.

When using conformance specification, the buying organisation is responsible for the performance of the purchase. If the product fails due to poorly designed specification, the buyer is wholly responsible for it. It cannot blame the supplier for the failure because they still provided 'fit for purpose' product.
'Time to produce specification is shortened': Conformance specification requires details on dimen-sion, materials, design, etc. With such requirements, time to produce a complete conformance specification is often longer than producing performance specification.
'Buyer cannot control the inputs': Conformance specification is a list of inputs from buyer, so buyer has control over the inputs that will make the product. It also means that buyer is responsible for any product failure.
'Buyer may face liquidity risks': Liquidity means that how quick a business turns its assets into cash. This is a financial term, it does not link directly with specification failure.

With strategic suppliers, the aim should be to work co-operatively with them to find ways of reducing costs to achieve a target cost. It is necessary to work with the suppliers in carrying out open book costing by having first persuaded them of the need to do it. Open book can be used to establish a Target Cost, a Compensation Event value and can eventually be used to ensure the payment of actual costs to an organization. A number of forms of contract cater for this functionality of which only the NEC goes to into any great depth of methodology.
If the suppliers worry about leak of confidential information, procurement team can suggest them to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The buying organisation should also comply with data protection regulations. The Employer / individual responsible for a project's costs should ultimately take a pragmatic and sensible approach with regard to commercially or personally sensitive data provided by the contractor. The primary goal of all open book cost management is to provide Employer comfort and security in the accuracy of commercial data; this effectively means striking a balance between undertaking full audits and blind faith.
Reference:
LO 1, AC 1.2