Sistemas alimentarios alternativos y agricultura periurbana en Milán, Italia

The turn towards quality in consumption and lifestyles has in recent years been matched by a profound shift in farming models. New social, environmental, and landscape functions have been included in the sustainable farming strategies of organic and multifunctional agriculture, short chains, direct selling, and farmers’ markets. In metropolitan regions and their peri-urban areas demand by local inhabitants and a reorganization of food production are driving a territorial transition towards sustainability. Consumers and producers are cooperating in food networks not only to regain control over the ways food is produced and to shape local alternative markets but also to establish true food sovereignty. This article presents the case of the Rural Solidarity Economy District of the South Milan Agricultural Park, where a reorganization of peri-urban agriculture and new forms of producer-consumer cooperation are promoting the transition towards alternative food systems. The analysis highlights the aspects of change related primarily to the reorganization of the model of a farming enterprise and to the subjectivities emerging as “new peasants”, using a critical approach with respect to their social role, to agricultural practices, and to food, with new cognitive and relational skills developed in the practical and shared construction of territorial sustainability and food sovereignty.El giro hacia la calidad en el consumo y en los estilos de vida en los últimos años ha ido acompañado de un profundo cambio en los modelos agrícolas. Las estrategias de agricultura orgánica y multifuncional sostenible, de cadenas cortas, de venta directa y de mercados de agricultores engloban nuevos objetivos paisajísticos, ambientales y sociales. En las regiones metropolitanas y sus áreas peri-urbanas la demanda local y la reorganización de la producción de alimentos están impulsando una transición territorial hacia la sostenibilidad. Los consumidores y los productores están cooperando en las redes de alimentos no sólo para recuperar el control sobre la forma en que estos se producen y para dar forma a los mercados locales alternativos, sino también para establecer una verdadera soberanía alimentaria. En este artículo se presenta el caso del Distrito Rural de Economía Solidaria en el Parque Agrícola del Sur de Milán, donde una reorganización de la agricultura peri-urbana y las nuevas formas de cooperación entre productores y consumidores están promoviendo una transición hacia sistemas alimentarios alternativos. El análisis pone de relieve los aspectos del cambio relacionado principalmente con la reorganización del modelo de empresa agrícola y de las subjetividades emergentes como “nuevos campesinos”, utilizando un enfoque crítico con respecto a su función social, a las prácticas agrícolas, y a la alimentación, con nuevas habilidades cognitivas y relacionales desarrolladas en la construcción práctica y compartida de la sostenibilidad territorial y la soberanía alimentaria

Volatility, Growth and Labour Elasticity

We study the relationship between growth and variability in a DSGE model with nominal rigidities and growth driven by learning-by-doing. We show that this relationship may be positive or negative depending on the impulse source of fluctuations A key role is also played by the Frisch elasticity of labour supply and by institutional features of the labour market. Our general findings are that monetary shocks volatility will generally have a negative effect on growth, while the opposite tends to be true for fiscal and productivity shocks. These findings are somehow consistent with the existing empirical evidence: data show, in fact, a somewhat ambiguous relationship between output growth and real variability, but a generally negative relationship between output growth and nominal variability.Growth; Volatility; Monetary and Real Shocks; Labour Supply Elasticity; Second-Order Approximation Methods

Optimal Manipulation Rules in a Mixed Duopoly

We study the optimal manipulation rules of a public firm’s objective function in a mixed duopoly with imperfect product substitutability. We compare the solutions under quantity and price competition, and the way in which they are affected by the degree of product substitutability. This allows us to show that partial privatization, strategic delegation and other specific government’s commitments on the objective function of the public management can be looked at as special cases of these optimal rules, and to evaluate the viability of these policies under the two modes of competition. In this framework, we also discuss the equivalence between manipulation of the objective function and Stackelberg leadership.Mixed oligopoly, strategic manipulation, partial privatization

The Price Index Effect and Macroeconomic Inefficiency

In the Dixit-Stiglitz model of monopolistic competition the effects of individual pricing decisions on the aggregate price index are neglected. Tliis paper studies the implications of this approximation in terms of the efficiency of macroeconomic equilibria. We show that allowing for the price-index effect, makes the degree of inefficiency positively correiated with the number of agents; it also reduces the scope for New Keynesian outcomes, such as price rigidity and multiple equilibria.New Keynesian economies, aggregate demand externalities, nominal rididity

Spatial Discrimination with Quantity Competition and High Transportation Costs: a Note

In this paper we extend the analysis of the standard model of spatial discrimination with quantity competition along the linear city to the case in which the unit transportation cost is greater than one. We show that in such a case the unique subgame perfect Nash equilibrium in locations is a dispersed symmetric equilibrium. Moreover, at this equilibrium firms' locations are not monotone in the transportation cost parameter.Market Coverage

Essential Farmworkers and the Pandemic Crisis: Migrant Labour Conditions, and Legal and Political Responses in Italy and Spain

The agri-food system across Europe relies heavily on migrant labour. Border lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic immobilised thousands of foreign farmworkers, giving rise to fears of labour shortages and food production losses in EU countries. Farmers’ organisations sought institutional interventions to address this labour demand. Although migrant workers have become a fundamental component of core sectors in recent decades, it is only in the current health emergency that they were recognised as ‘essential’ workers. The chapter analyses the working conditions of migrant farmworkers alongside national debates and institutional interventions in Italy and Spain during the pandemic. It provides a critical comparative analysis of legal and policy interventions to address migrants’ situations of vulnerability. Both countries depend on important contingents of EU and non-EU migrant farmworkers, especially in fruit and vegetable production; moreover, they present common aspects in supply chain dynamics and labour market policies, but also specific differences in labour, migration and social policies. Both adopted measures to face the condition of irregularity of migrant workers in order to respond to labour demand in the agri-food sector and to provide these workers with safe working and living conditions during the pandemic. However, these interventions reveal shortcomings that significantly limit their impact and outcomes, calling into question to what extent migrant workers are really considered as ‘essential’ in a long-term perspective and, therefore, to what extent the current pandemic constitutes an opportunity for a new push to enforce labour and migrant rights

Introducing fuzzy quantification in OWL 2 ontologies

In this paper, we briefly report our latest achievements in fuzzy granulation of OWL 2 ontologies. More precisely, we extend a previously presented method in order to address a new class of sentences with fuzzy quantifier