LIBRI DI RAFFAELE ZANOLI

Dried pasta is depicted as the most traditional and popular Italian food culture. Italy has the highest per capita pasta consumption worldwide, but lifestyle changes define new habits and trends in consuming this traditional Italian food. The present study aims to explore organic consumers’ knowledge, attitudes and preferences for dried pasta and, specifically, the relevance of organic and “ancient” durum wheat varieties.Results show limited knowledge of consumers about dried pasta characteristics and the relevance of extrinsic cues, especially those related to expected taste and local origin. Therefore, the most relevant claims for improving the communication strategy of dried pasta are identified. Companies should meet consumers’ preferences by increasing investments in the innovation of this staple food with a focus on improving production processes and packaging design with more effective front-of-pack communication. The findings provide insights into the pasta market, which may help organic companies to enter this new market and make their products more appealing to consumers.

This work illustrates the acceptability of innovations in the Italian dairy supply chain. The research is part of a larger study financed by the EU Commission (EU-FP7 SOLID - "Sustainable Organic and Low-Input Dairying") aimed at optimising the financial, agronomic and nutritional aspects of the organic and low input dairy sector. Several studies demonstrate how the development and the adoption of innovations are critical in improving and increasing the competitiveness of the supply chains (es. Stewart-Knox & Mitchell, 2003). In this work, the Q methodology was applied to investigate the innovation acceptability to organic and low input dairy supply chain members (Consumers, Farmers and Retailers & Processors). The aim was to identify and analyse different and common opinions of the Q participants. The results showed two different perspectives. The first one is a ‘sustainable’ view, shared by the majority of participants to the Q study; the second one is more practical, and mostly adopted by farmers. Some methodological and strategic implications are also presented in detail.

According to the new organic (Regulation (ec) No 834/2007, a mandatory eu logo for organic food was introduced as well as new guidelines to label organic products. In the new labelling the indication of origin of the raw materials is compulsory: ‘eu Agriculture’, ‘non-eu Agriculture’ or ‘eu/non-eu Agriculture’. When all agricultural raw materials came from the same country, the terms ‘eu’ and ‘non-eu’ can be replaced or supplemented by the name of that country. The name of the Organic certifier can be also signalled to final consumers by the product labelling. In some eu countries (Denmark and Germany) the product label based on a third-party certification, private or public, make them trust the underlying certification scheme. Although consumers often lack knowledge on organic certification and organic farming practices in general, several studies highlight that scepticism and uncertainty towards organic logos and certification prevent consumers from buying more organic food. The present study analyses how consumers perceive some of the most important aspect of the new labelling regulation (the origin of raw materials and the organic certifier for organic food). Few studies exist on consumer views on organic labelling for organic food and willingness to pay for trust in the organic food quality (Burrell et al., 2006). The recommendations drawn from our findings can help stakeholders in the Italian organic sector. 415 consumers in three Italian locations (Ancona, Milano, Bari) participated to a survey in March 2010. The results show that the organic consumers prefer organic products from Europe and trust products certified by Italian (more than from foreign countries) and public certification bodies (more than private). These findings suggest the need for transparency of the complexity of the organic certification and accreditation system, unknown to most of the consumers. There is a need to make them clear what the new label characteristics stand for and remove consumer concerns of the standards and the trustworthiness of the inspection system.

Adoption of organic farming practices: a theoretical and empirical analysis (di Raffaele Zanoli, Simona Naspetti) - ABSTRACT: In this paper a theoretical model to analyse and explain the adoption of organic farming techniques at a regional level is presented. Farmers goals and goals structures are used in a means-end analysis of the producer’s behaviour, leading to a representation of the farmer’s decision making process which is more general than the simple neoclassical model of the firm. The relationships among farmer’s motivations and institutional factors acting as incentives and barriers are explicitly taken into account in the analysis, which embeds historical factors as part of the explanation of the process of adoption. As a result, organic farming can be viewed as an institutional adaptation to the absence of certain public goods markets, such as those of clean water, healthy soil, hazard-free food, etc. Organic farming clearly perform a role in internalising the externalities in agricultural production; in this sense it serves as an incentive device. At the same time it also operates as a self-selection device, to identify the characteristics of different individuals. Individuals who believe that they can play a positive role in protecting the environment or, more in general, in shaping the society by their own work, will be more willing to convert to organic farming. An empirical application of the model is used to analyse the adoption process in a paradigmatic Italian region.