The succession of systemic crises in the last 20 years has affected our lives and has shaken the old order. The global community, represented by UN-based institutions, has encouraged a common effort ...to address global challenges. In the agri-food sector, one of the most relevant to the emerging societal challenges, the need for a new generation of agri-food policies is evident. The present paper reviews the recent literature on transformative policies, identifying their key characteristics - directionality, reflexivity, and market articulation - and proposing a framework to adapt these characteristics to the policy cycle.
This article discusses the economic dimensions of agroecological farming systems in Europe. It firstly theoretically elaborates the reasons why, and under what conditions, agroecological farming ...systems have the potential to produce higher incomes than farms that follow the conventional logic. This theoretical exposition is then followed by a presentation of empirical material from a wide range of European countries that shows the extent to which this potential is being realized. The empirical data draw upon different styles of farming that can be described as ‘proto-agroecological’: approaches to farming that are agroecological by nature, but which may not necessarily explicitly define themselves as agroecological. The empirical material that we present shows the huge potential and radical opportunities that Europe's, often silent, ‘agroecological turn’ offers to farmers that could (and should) be the basis for the future transformation of European agricultural policies, since agroecology not only allows for more sustainable production of healthier food but also considerably improves farmers' incomes. It equally carries the promise of re-enlarging productive agricultural (and related) employment and increasing the total income generated by the agricultural sector, at both regional and national levels. While we recognise that agroecology is a worldwide and multidimensional phenomenon we have chosen to limit this analysis to Europe and the economic dimension. This choice is made in order to refute current discourses that represent agroecology as unproductive and unprofitable and an option that would require massive subsidies.
•Throughout Europe a range of proto-agroecological practices can be identified. .•Agroecology carries considerable economic potential: it sustains employment levels and increases incomers. .•The VA/GVP ratio helps to explain the strength of agroecological farming.•Agroecological farming is key to the much needed transformation of European agriculture.
This article argues that ethics is a key driver of change in food chain performance. Critically, multiple stakeholder perspectives need to be understood as being legitimate when developing shared ...norms of what is understood by food supply chain (FSC) performance. To develop this perspective, the article examines the discourses surrounding the performance of FSCs in 12 different national contexts. It develops a multi‐criteria performance matrix (MCPM) composed of 24 attributes that reflect national FSC sustainability discourses. Specifically, it considers the potential role of reflexive governance in encouraging change to the frames by which actors and institutions judge the performance of FSCs. In assessing the links between ethics and reflexive governance, two types of ethical attribute are identified: ‘commonly identified’ attributes, which signify ethical dilemmas routinely discussed yet open to debate and subject to refinement and change; and ‘procedural’ attributes, which describe actions that encourage actors in the FSC to organise and structure themselves so as to more explicitly embody ethical considerations in their activities. The MCPM can be understood as a form of sustainability appraisal, but also as a cognitive tool with which to instigate further deliberation and action, helping to better manage transitions to sustainability within FSCs.
Life cycle assessment is a widespread method for measuring and monitoring the environmental impacts of production processes, thereby allowing the comparison of business-as-usual with more ecological ...scenarios. Life cycle assessment research can support evidence-based policy making by comparing and communicating the environmental impacts of agricultural and food systems, informing about the impact of mitigating interventions and monitoring sectoral progress towards sustainable development goals. This article aims at improving the contribution of science to evidence-based policies for agricultural sustainability and food security, while facilitating further research, by delivering a content-analysis based literature review of life cycle assessment research in agricultural and food economics. Results highlight that demand-side and system-level approaches need further development, as policies need to support redesigned agricultural systems and newly conceived dietary guidelines, which combine environmental protection and health benefits, without reducing productivity. Similarly, more research effort towards consequential life cycle assessment and multidimensional assessment may benefit policy makers by considering the rebound effects associated with the large-scale implementation of impact-mitigating interventions. Promising interventions involve the promotion of waste circularization strategies, which could also improve the profitability of agriculture. For effective policy making towards agricultural sustainability and food security worldwide, countries with the greatest expected population growth and raise of urbanization rates need more attention by researchers.
The last two decades have witnessed a growing academic debate on labour exploitation, caporalato , organised crime, and migration issues in agriculture, which, as wicked problems, are deeply ...interconnected and resist generalisable solutions. To contribute to this thriving debate from a social innovation lens, we investigate the organising practices meant to disrupt the organised status-quo of exploitation. Drawing upon a case study from Foggia in Puglia (southern Italy), we investigate how an Italian non-profit organisation developed and implemented a multi-stakeholder pilot project of economic integration in rural areas to confront the phenomenon of labour exploitation in agriculture. Through collaboration among authorities, civil societies, and private sectors, this pilot project managed to unlock underused resources to meet the needs of the most vulnerable individuals embedded in the local ecosystem. By developing a grounded theory on practices of disembedding and embedding, this study contributes to theories on social innovation as political actions and interactions that purposely trigger disruption in established systems of labour exploitation, organised crime, and migration.
Food systems rely on natural resources for production causing their depletion. Sustainability assessment can encourage farms and agri-food companies to improve sustainability performances. ...Sustainability assessment frameworks and tools differ in their purposes, scope, methods of application, and required time for execution; however, most of them do not fit with value chains, or they do not cover all sustainability dimensions. Our objective is to propose a holistic framework to assess sustainability at agri-food value chains level. The proposed framework combines the Sustainability Assessment of Food and Agriculture systems (SAFA) (El Hage, 2012) 1 and The Agri-food Evaluation Framework (TEEB) 2. It incorporates the concepts of Socio-Ecological Systems, Assemblage, and Social Practices. It integrates system dynamics by emphasising human and natural capital stocks and their users. We explain in detail the methodological steps we followed to construct and to apply this new framework to two case studies in Italy and France. The new framework was applied to real-life case studies and has shown its effectiveness and demonstrates its potential for widespread use in similar scenarios.
This survey comprehensively examines the public irrigation decision support systems (IDSS) in Italy, offering a detailed description, analysis and evaluation of their features. The study investigates ...the agrometeorological networks and infrastructures that support Italian IDSS, providing a clearer understanding of the national context. The evaluation criteria include relevant factors such as soil moisture monitoring, crop water requirements (CWR) estimation models, biophysical parameters along with their spatial and temporal resolutions, irrigation planning and decision support visualization. Additionally, the assessment covers accessibility, scalability and interoperability of these systems. The survey also highlights the strengths and weaknesses of various IDSS, such as IRRIFRAME, IRRISIAS and IRTO, discussing their operational methodologies, data integration and regional coverage. The aim is to provide insights that facilitate advancements in sustainable irrigation management practices and address key challenges for future developments at both regional and national levels. This comprehensive evaluation seeks to enhance the effectiveness of IDSS in promoting sustainable water management in agriculture across Italy.
•The special issue is on dynamics of responsibility in the context of food systems.•Responsibility has growing importance in the context of sustainability transitions.•Responsibility changes and ...depends on institutional conditions.•Responsibility has three dimensions: temporal, socio-technical and relational.
The United Nations forecast a significant shift in global population distribution by 2050, with rural populations projected to decline. This decline will particularly challenge mountain areas’ ...cultural heritage, well-being, and economic sustainability. Understanding the economic, environmental, and societal effects of rural population decline is particularly important in Europe, where mountainous regions are vital for supplying goods. The present paper describes a geospatially explicit semantic knowledge graph containing information on 454 European mountain value chains. It is the first large-size, structured collection of information on mountain value chains. Our graph, structured through ontology-based semantic modelling, offers representations of the value chains in the form of narratives. The graph was constructed semi-automatically from unstructured data provided by mountain-area expert scholars. It is accessible through a public repository and explorable through interactive Story Maps and a semantic Web service. Through semantic queries, we demonstrate that the graph allows for exploring territorial complexities and discovering new knowledge on mountain areas’ environmental, societal, territory, and economic aspects that could help stem depopulation.
With growing concern for the unsustainability of food systems, the international research community has turned its attention to small farms as key actors to potentially face the global food crisis. ...This study aims to support a policy design that values the diversity of small farms business models vis‐à‐vis environmental, economic, social and institutional challenges affecting European farming systems. Building on the existing classification of five small farm types in the EU, our analysis targets the business model dynamics of small farms in four Euro‐Mediterranean countries: Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain. For this analysis, we applied resilience thinking to the Business Model Canvas framework. This innovative conceptual framework allows us to depict the architecture of small farms business models and their role in farming systems. The diversity of small farms business models and their continuous adaptation to changing conditions allows for the identification of a strongly heterogeneous assemblage of farms that contribute to the resilience of food systems at local, regional and multiple other scales.
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