BOOKS BY PIETRO PULINA

Agriculture and the agri-food industry are central to fostering economic growth and the Sustainable Development Goals’ targets. However, to meet the world’s future development, it is necessary to make the agri-food system more resource-efficient. The transition towards the circular economy (CE) paradigm is commonly seen as a promising strategy to overcome the critical issues affecting the sector. However, different theoretical and practical problems still need to be solved. Specifically, the CE performance measurement of specific sectors or national systems is crucial as it helps to identify and correct any deviation from the vision set out for achieving the sustainable development objectives. This article aims to contribute to CE research, focusing on European agriculture and the agri-food sector. Drawing on the EE-MRIO database EXIOBASE v3.7, this paper estimates the level of circularity in the European Union countries and the role of agriculture and agri-food in determining circularity. Results showed that circularity in the EU is low and significant differences between countries exist. Agriculture contributes to 80.5% of the entire amount of recycled materials in Europe. Vice versa, the contribution provided by the agri-food sector is limited to 1%. Some policy implications derive from this study.

Questa ricerca, finanziata dalla Regione Sardegna, si propone di “dare una mano” a chi deve decidere una strategia e delle politiche per contrastare lo spopolamento e la marginalità delle cosiddette aree interne della Sardegna. E si propone di misurare le fragilità e le antifragilità con un modello semplice, amichevole, ma capace di proporre azioni e politiche sistemiche, un modello basato su una valutazione di debolezze e potenzialità, che un po’ impropriamente abbiamo chiamato capitale territoriale.

This book contains the proceedings of the LIV Conference SIDEA and the XXV Convention SIEA, with the formula of a joint Conference titled “Cooperative strategies and value creation in sustainable food supply chain”. Cooperation in all its forms represents a valuable paradigm to define new horizons of development and build new organizational models of value creation according to a sustainable approach not referred to a single unit, but to the entire supply chain. The thematic areas have allowed us to investigate the issue in all its aspects, starting from the analysis of the main production and consumption models, up to organizational models, forms of territorial, sectoral and environmental cooperation, and policies with which to add value to the supply chain.

This article presents an overview of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (csr), analyzing firstly its development and theoretical approaches. As many authors highlight, csr originated and developed along with the growing number of relationships in which companies engage; on the one hand, csr derives advantages from the different kinds of stimuli arising from the size and complexity of these relationships, but on the other hand, there are new demands that society makes on the business community as a consequence. csr is very important for agrofood companies because of the great degree to which agro-food sector activities depend and impact on the economy, the environment and society. Themes related to csr have featured in EU and national policy for some time, not only in Italy but also in other European and non-EU States. The need to give visibility to their involvement in "social responsibility" has led companies increasingly to adopt charters of values and codes of ethical conduct that legitimize their activities, as well as adhering to the legal framework and ensuring individual morality. This social accounting fulfills the need for transparency, so that companies monitor their own performances and communicate the results to customers, with positive effects on the company image. csr is increasingly important: the reasons lie in the need to create a new system of rules, or to supplement those already existent in production processes involving increasingly numerous and complex relations and widening groups of stakeholders. At the end of the work, two case studies are presented as examples of successful agro-food companies that have put responsible behavior into practice, also involving in this process other companies above and below them in the same production chain.

Sheep farming plays a large role in some specific economies, maintains strong links with natural resources, and produces multiple functions in rural areas. Its sustainability has to deal with different purposes. This study aims to assess economic and environmental sustainability of extensive dairy sheep farming in Sardinia. A case study approach was adopted in order to directly collect farm data and to integrate assessments on more dimensions of sustainability. We found that farm is not profitable without support of public financial aids. Furthermore, production of nitrogen is under the normative limit and greenhouses gas emission intensity, allocated with economic criteria, was equal to 2,3 and 16,1 kg of CO2eq emitted per kg of produced milk and meat, respectively. Empirical evidences suggest the need to better take into account environmental externalities and into the farmer’s choices. A public financial support system expressively based on minimizing environmental externalities might force farmers to incentive eco-sustainable production and guarantee them profitability.

La tutela e la valorizzazione del paesaggio rurale rappresentano temi di rilievo strategico all’interno della Politica Agricola Comunitaria (PAC). E evidente, infatti, che le caratteristiche di un paesaggio rurale possono mutare significativamente a seconda dei possibili cambiamenti di scenario che condizionano l’uso delle superfici destinate all’agricoltura. Tali effetti possono essere indotti dalle dinamiche dei prodotti agroalimentari e dalle scelte promosse dal decisore pubblico. Le aree forestali, in virtu della loro valenza ricreazionale e di conservazione del territorio, rivestono un ruolo importante nel caratterizzare i paesaggi rurali. Il presente studio e volto a valutare il contributo delle foreste e di altri usi alternativi a fini agricoli nel determinare il valore del paesaggio rurale in Gallura (Sardegna, Italia). La metodologia Choice Experiment (CE) e stata applicata a questo scopo, con l’obiettivo di stimare il valore attribuito a tre specifici attributi paesaggistici, che riflettono altrettanti usi del suolo diffusi in Gallura: presenza di foreste, di vigneti e di pascolo. La disponibilita a pagare stimata per la conservazione della foresta e risultata essere assai piu alta di quelle relative al pascolo e ai vigneti. Da questi risultati discendono alcune importanti implicazioni sul piano degli indirizzi di politica agraria.

This paper aims to carry out a first-pass estimation of the power wielded by large-scale retail organisations in the Italian agri-food system, by using the olive oil supply chain as a representative case study. An econometric price transmission model suggests that farmers suffer from big retail’s market power in the olive oil sector. Nevertheless, the increasing power of modern distribution companies in the agro-food supply chain depends on several economic, institutional and policy factors. This is a multi-faceted issue which makes us take into account not only economic but also social, policy, psychological and behavioral aspects too. This complexity can be handled using different empirical approaches: among these approaches, we explore the potential benefits of the so-called "economic-political" framework. From this approach a complex empirical estimation of power presence cannot be discounted.