Private label organic food products: profile and behaviour of Italian consumers characterized through a multivariate approach

This paper analyses data collected across a panel of 1.000 representative Italian family units, gathered by means of electronic questionnaires. The contents of the surveyed data were in relation to individuals’ consumption and purchasing behaviour in regards to organic and conventional food products. The general objective of the research has been primarily to characterize trends emanating from the surveyed results, and secondly to explore the possibility of reducing the number of the variables without losing statistical information from the data. Through the multiple correspondences analysis the complex space of the variables has been reduced to two main factors that explain the greater part of the inertia of the data. In addition, the number of consumers is categorised into five clusters, in order to evidence and to synthesize their total behaviours or attitudes

Private label organic food products: profile and behaviour of Italian consumers characterized through a multivariate approach

This paper analyses data collected across a panel of 1.000 representative Italian family units, gathered by means of electronic questionnaires. The contents of the surveyed data were in relation to individuals’ consumption and purchasing behaviour in regards to organic and conventional food products. The general objective of the research has been primarily to characterize trends emanating from the surveyed results, and secondly to explore the possibility of reducing the number of the variables without losing statistical information from the data. Through the multiple correspondences analysis the complex space of the variables has been reduced to two main factors that explain the greater part of the inertia of the data. In addition, the number of consumers is categorised into five clusters, in order to evidence and to synthesize their total behaviours or attitudes

The spread of no-till in conservation agriculture systems in Italy: indications for rural development policy-making

Abstract No-tillage is a farming system aiming at minimizing soil disturbance associated with the cultivation of arable crops. This technique, together with the practices of continuous soil cover and of crop rotation, also represents one of the elements of the so called Conservation agriculture, a paradigm of sustainable agriculture that is spreading in many areas of the globe. The aim of the work is to examine the spread of No-tillage in Italy analyzing the modalities of adoption and the factors that can influence it. Modalities of adoption can vary depending on whether No-tillage represents an incremental innovation within the ordinary management of the farm, or a complementary element of an alternative technological paradigm identifiable with Conservation agriculture. Factors influencing the adoption of No-tillage, widely studied in the literature, concern the characteristics of the natural environment, the structural features of the holdings (i.e. size) and also the presence of knowledge spillovers that are largely the result of spatial networks between farmers and other stakeholders. Elaborations have been first of all aimed at distinguishing the two types of modalities of adoption and subsequently at verifying the influence of the factors mentioned above, in particular through the Local Moran Index. In summary, the work describes how the diffusion of No-tillage practices can be partly ascribed to a cost saving-oriented incremental innovation process in the framework of a conventional paradigm of agriculture that mainly pertain to large size holdings. However, there is a significant number of farms where the adoption of No-tillage practices demonstrates the decision to try a more comprehensive reorganization of the way of doing agriculture, similar to the paradigm of Conservation agriculture, and in which the cognitive and relational aspects related to the aforementioned networks seem to be very important. Spatial analysis has allowed to depict two models of adaptation to the paradigm of Conservation agriculture: one is mainly concentrated in the rural areas of the central-northern Apennines, and another is located mainly in two regions of southern Italy (Puglia and Sicily)

The sustainability of rural diversification into tourism: a study in the Italian regions of the «convergence» objective

This paper deals with the issue of the sustainability of policies of agricultural diversification towards tourism which is emphasised in the programmes of rural development in many agricultural regions, like those of the “convergence objective” on which the analysis concentrated. In the paper it is pointed out that the way the regional authorities incentivate or assist farms to diversify into tourism could have implications for sustainability, examined in this study thorough the presence of five indicators. The weight of these per region, obtained from the combination of structural variables (number of accommodation facilities and of beds) and of flows (arrivals and presences) registered in farm tourism, was estimated by applying Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA) to the variation in presences recorded in the period 2002-2011. By introducing the institutional aspect of the sustainability of rural development processes, the paper also identifies “integrated rural tourism” as the most effective model of tourism diversification for farms, since this brings the focus back onto the local food producing system

Le filiere corte agroalimentari nei processi di sviluppo locale

Il paper propone una riflessione sul ruolo delle filiere corte agroalimentari nello sviluppo del territorio (interpretando quest’ultimo essenzialmente come un processo di consolidamento/trasformazione identitaria) e in particolare sul ruolo ad esse attribuito nei documenti di pianificazione strategica regionale e di area vasta in Pugli