Suchergebnisse

Food loss and waste have a negative environmental impact due to the water, land, energy and other natural resources used to produce the wasted food, along with post-consumption disposal costs. Reducing food waste will thus help improve sustainability and decrease the environmental impact of the food system. Using food waste for animal feed is of growing importance in terms of the policies targeted at tackling food waste but the current legal framework in the European Union (EU) strongly restricts the possibility of using food waste for this purpose. The aim of this work is to evaluate the feasibility of innovative measures for feed production in the EU and to identify the best strategies to implement them. First, a technical evaluation of a case study is presented, which is a process developed in the United States for urban food waste transformation into animal feed. Second, there is an analysis of the potential application of this process in the European Union within the current legal framework. The results reveal that the feed product derived from food waste is compliant with EU safety requirements and is nutritionally valuable. This work also suggests that the implementation of this kind of process in the European Union has great potential, provided that food surplus is recovered and treated before it turns into waste and that the different types of food surplus identified are used as feed for the right animal type in accordance with European legislation (i.e., livestock, aquarium fish, pets). On these terms, pet food can be the most concrete strategy for using food waste within the European context. In general, the implementation of feed-from-food measures to reduce food waste in Europe is already possible and does not need to wait for further policy interventions.

AbstractDiversification in agriculture could ensure the survival of farming by broadening the income base of farms and encouraging agricultural sustainability. The diversification of on‐farm activities may depend on socioeconomic and environmental characteristics. Although multifunctionality is a hotly debated topic, few papers have focused on the farm characteristics that influence diversification and none have focused on the influence of the spatial pattern. This paper examines the relationship between farm characteristics and the adoption of a specific type of diversification. An econometric model is presented that uses a spatial autoregressive lag model at the municipal scale. The results demonstrate that the activation of each diversification dimension is influenced by both internal and external factors, encompassing farmers' characteristics, the farm structure, and territorial features, including regional and spatial patterns. Deepening is mainly influenced by the farmer's age, education, and the presence of small and labor‐intensive farms. The key factors for broadening diversification are the presence of small farms and farms with mixed production (breeding and crop cultivation). Regrounding is most affected by the labor‐intensive farms in the area and the farms with mixed production.

Lombardy, with 87.393 hectares of rice is one of the leader region for this production in Italy and in the European Union (EU) too. This area is characterized by a strong connection with tradition both in terms of agricultural landscape and food culture. Nevertheless, during the last decade, farmers faced increasing competitiveness issues, mostly related to EU subsidies losses, market prices and the technical constraints of the traditional rice supply chain: provider of technical means, farmers, brokers and rice mill. In this scenario, the "Riso e Rane" Rural District (R&RD) supports farmers in improving competitiveness through innovation. The aim of the paper is to investigate the innovation in the rice supply chain related to the specific action of R&RD, that accounts for 60 farms. Starting from the direct survey carried out on the district productive structures, we investigate the farms' degree of innovation related to the adoption of a new model of supply chain. The case study areas is characterized by rice that represents the most important culture with 2.773 hectares (more than 58% of the district Utilized Agricultural Area (UAA)). In 2012, R&RD won a regional project titled "Buono, Sano e Vicino" with the aim to help local rice farmers developing an alternative supply chain in which the district grow into the local actor to increase farmers bargaining power and promotes new market strategies. To make this the attention was focused on one of the most important variety of Italian rice: Carnaroli. The main results of the study showed that the project was able to innovate the traditional supply chain in all the four innovation areas according to OECD (2005): product, process, market and organization. In conclusion, our results suggest that the R&RD is able to respond to farmers necessities in term of market competitiveness and to improve the sustainability of local food system.

We provide an in-depth analysis of biotechnology patents filed in the European Patent Office (EPO) and US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), building a comprehensive dataset of more than 7,000 patents for the period 2002 through 2009. Results show a larger number of patents filed with the USPTO than the EPO. The private sector is more market oriented and owns the majority of the intellectual property (IP) rights, while public research is mainly focused on innovations useful in specific agricultural landscapes.

Sustainable development is more often considered by media, public opinion, and politicians to be the main goal our society should attempt to pursue in the coming years. To this aim, academic researchers have made sustainability one of the main objects of their studies. This work focuses on environmental sustainability and presents a brief overview of how it is taken into consideration in the agricultural economics field by considering this topic from different perspectives and thus highlighting how this field is gradually broadening its scope to include sustainable development objectives. Our analysis shows that the path towards sustainable development is strongly correlated to the protection of the environment. Therefore, agricultural policies aimed at protecting and preserving the environment, and, more in general, innovation along the agri-food chain, together with consumer attention towards environmental issues, can play an important role in achieving this objective.