L'agricoltura sul territorio: valore e gestione. Un modello multidimensionale per la valutazione spaziale del presidio agricolo in Toscana

La ricerca è stata condotta e strutturata a partire dall’esigenza di individuare una metodologia per effettuare l’analisi gestionale delle diverse categorie tipizzate di paesaggio agrario regionale. A tal proposito sono state indagate le carenze informative più rilevanti, dando così avvio al primo step dedicato ad approfondire le possibili connessioni tra le diverse tipologie di dati utili allo scopo. Dopo l'identificazione delle basi informative necessarie e la riflessione sulla tipologia di strumento di cui dotarsi, è nato dunque il Database Integrato per la Spazializzazione del Presidio Agricolo Toscano (DISPAT) al fine di indagare il tema della gestione agricola del territorio regionale. Una volta creato il DISPAT, sono state effettuate specifiche elaborazioni secondo vari tematismi e si è iniziato a ragionare sul quadro concettuale d’insieme rilevando che, oltre al livello della pianificazione territoriale a scala regionale, tale SIT poteva essere implementato anche ad altri livelli operativi come: la programmazione per le politiche di sostegno economico alle attività agricole; la pianificazione territoriale e urbanistica a diversa scala; e la progettazione. Il lavoro presentato si è ispirato ad un'ampia intersettorialità, cercando di mettere in relazione studi specialistici per ricostruire un contesto dinamico in cui, nonostante alcune possibili confusioni terminologiche e incomprensioni imputabili alle differenti tradizioni culturali, lo strumento/elemento strutturale di connessione è l’utilizzo del GIS (Geographic information system). La struttura della tesi è stata così articolata: si è partiti da un inquadramento teorico e fenomenologico per approfondire il problema dell'organizzazione e distribuzione spaziale del presidio territoriale ad opera delle aziende agricole, per poi passare alla rassegna degli strumenti metodologici cui si è fatto ricorso, e presentare dunque il quadro regionale dell'attività agricola, concludendo con l'implementazione del DISPAT

Understanding the participation in agri-environmental schemes: evidence from Tuscany Region

Agri-Environmental Schemes (AESs) represent one of the main agricultural policy instruments which address environmental objectives in Common Agricultural Policy. In spite of twenty years of application and its high share of RDP budget, several evaluation reports and scientific literature have measured a low environmental impacts compared with expectations. Economic literature has identified in low target level of schemes, low participation rates, spatial heterogeneity and asymmetric information between farmers and public administration the main reasons for low impact. The objective of the paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of determinants of agrienvironmental adoption. The objective is pursued combining results of farm level adoption analysis with spatial analysis of participation rate. Results show that both micro and meso-characteristics strongly affect participation to AESs. In fact, farm and household structure, quality of advice services and territory endogeneity, significantly affect AESs adoption

A Spatial Analysis to evaluate the Farm's structure and the Geography of Rural Areas: The case study of Mugello Area

In order to promote rural development public agricultural policies need to constantly adapt to the continuous change of socio-economic conditions of rural areas, related to both farm and territorial dynamics. Hence beyond the zoning provided by the European Commission and developed by Member States [art. 11 Reg. Ce 1698/2005], policy makers should take into account geography, farms characteristics and farmers attitude to acquire a deeper knowledge of these rural areas. This paper aims at supporting the design of proper agricultural policies focusing on the case-study of Mugello territory, a rural area located in the North of Tuscany, which includes both: intermediate rural areas and areas with development problems. This purpose is firstly pursued by generating a geo-referenced database able to develop a deeper analysis on the existing interactions between socio - economic attributes of farms, land use and agricultural policies. The study combined several sources of data: the 2010 Italian Agriculture Census, the Tuscany Regional Agency for Payments in Agriculture (ARTEA) database, and cover land data from the database Corine Land Cover (CLC-06), as updated to 2007 by LaMMA (Laboratory for Environment Monitoring and Modeling). The resulting sample is composed by 821 farms operating in the Mugello area which are split in four different farm styles according to their level of multifunctionality and enterpreunership capacity. Results show that Mugello territory is characterized by an internal differentiation, that determines the prevalence of different farm structure according to the sub-areas characteristics. Especially analyzing the distribution of payments related to area with development problems we note that there are still margins of improvement

The Food Council of Pisa

The need for a transition to more sustainable food systems has made the definition of more integrated and advanced forms of management of food-related issues increasingly urgent, especially in the urban contexts. As for many other cities around the world, also in the territory of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy), since 2010 a process aimed at developing an integrated food strategy has been promoted (the Food Plan of the province of Pisa). In the context of new reflexivity and mobilization created by the process for the definition and implementation of the Plan, in 2013 a group of citizens, researchers and professionals established the Food Council of Pisa, an organization aimed at stimulating a reflection on the food-related issues at urban level and at promoting an integrated approach to their management. The Council started to operate identifying some specific areas of action, establishing relationships with the various initiatives carried out by local civil society, and trying to interact with public administrations

A spatial analysis of terrain features and farming styles in a disadvantaged area of Tuscany (Mugello): implications for the evaluation and the design of CAP payments

In recent times there has been a growing awareness of the role of agriculture in providing public goods and services, in particular in less favoured areas. However, since agriculture is an economic activity, its permanence implies that it should be able to generate a satisfactory income for farmers. Where this is not possible, due to natural constraints or adverse economic and market conditions, in order to maintain an adequate use of farmland it is necessary to provide public aid to farmers. In this framework, the design of proper interventions aimed to promote rural development in less favoured areas should be based on a deep knowledge at the farm and territorial level. As regards the territorial level, the RDP zoning [art. 11 Reg. Ce 1698/2005] developed by Member States on the base of the guidelines provided by the European Commission is very often not sufficient to adequately define the territorial characteristics of rural areas. The use of GIS techniques may help to handle this issue by providing a better and more detailed knowledge at the territorial level. Farm level is important insofar as aid effectiveness is usually strongly depending on the type of farm that is receiving it. Thus, a careful selection of beneficiaries could determine a more effective and efficient distribution of resources. This paper aims to provide a spatial analysis of natural constraints and types of farming style in Mugello area and to analyse their relations with CAP aid distribution. Both Single Payment Scheme (SPS) and Rural Development Programme (RDP) payments have been taken into account. The paper combines a GIS analysis of terrain features with the theoretical approach of farming styles. For this purpose, the study integrates several sources of data: the 2010 Italian Agriculture Census, the Tuscany Regional Agency for Payments in Agriculture (ARTEA) database, and land cover data from the database Corine Land Cover (CLC-06), as updated to 2007 by LAMMA (Laboratory for Environment Monitoring and Modelling). A geo-referenced database including socioeconomic attributes of farms, land use, and terrain characteristics has been generated in order to merge information at territorial and farm level. The results of this integrated analysis confirm that Mugello is a very heterogeneous area as regards terrain characteristics despite the fact that it is totally included in less favoured areas. On the other side, farm strategies and economic results seem to be related to entrepreneurial characteristics as much as to natural constraints. The analysis of Pillar I payments and RDP payments for farms located in this mountainous area shows a very complex situation where the strategies implemented by farmers of the strongest farming styles may successfully counteract natural constraints. Besides, in the Authors' opinion, the analyses performed highlight the importance of spatial analysis as a tool for evaluating how public resources are distributed on a territory, thus providing also useful information on the way this distribution could be improved, e.g. for ensuring a higher level of environmental services

Role of Small farming in food security and sustainability: a case study for Tuscany (IT)

The debate on the size of farming, and its relevance for policy purposes, has come back to the fore in recent years. The “International Year of Family Farming and Smallholder Farming”, held by FAO in 2014, aimed to raise the profile of family and smallholder farming worldwide”. During EXPO 2015, a debate followed on structural developments in agriculture and the implications for the competitiveness and sustainability of the agri-food sector and rural areas. Despite a declining number of agricultural holdings and a gradual increase in average farm size, the agricultural sector is largely composed by farms with less than 5 ha of agricultural land and a standard output below 4 000 euro per year. Beyond economic size and value of production, other criteria (e.g. labour units and family involvement can be adopted), alone or in combination, to define size of farming. Academic literature provides a mixed picture on weather a declining number of farms, and a gradual increase in size should be welcomed or contrasted. Oppositional arguments contrasting smaller and larger farm structures with respect to sustainability and food and nutrition security, are nourished by the lack of sufficient or unambiguous scientific evidence. A first line of thought stresses the distinctiveness of smaller farms in delivering food security and sustainability (Rabinowicz, 2014) and the capacity of small farms to mobilize resources additional to those procured through market exchange (van der Ploeg, 2013). A second line of thought considers size as a nonrelevant criterion to assess the performance on food security and sustainability (OECD, 2005), supporting the view on steering behaviours oriented towards improved sustainability, regardless of size. Dualistic debates often focus on some aspects of sustainability and neglect others (Kirwan et al. 2017) or overlook the importance of complementarity between complex agro-food systems and territoriality, as local context largely affects what structural change is desirable at territorial level (Darnhofer et al. 2010). This contribution presents the conceptual and analytical framework adopted in a research project named SALSA, “Small farms, small food businesses and sustainable food and nutrition security (FNS)”, and provides an illustration on one of the 35 reference regions selected. The analysis considers Lucca province in Tuscany and aims at generating preliminary insights in relation to the role of small farms in food and nutrition security

Integrated Urban Regeneration: the Opportunity of Enhancing the Open Spaces

The paper, draws the attention of the debate a reflection on the possibility of developing, in some urban areas, strategies and actions for the regeneration and redevelopment of the city; bringing to the attention not only the improvement of the spatial and functional dimension of the rundown neighborhoods, but also of the social and environmental dimensions. The valorisation of these areas may benefit from the theory of Ecosystem Services [, which appears to be able to renew the traditional approaches, to land use planning from the perspective of urban metabolism [; in this regard are of great interest those forms of planning of degraded urban fringes that take into account the minimal standard of space and/or rural services by to each inhabitant in order to make an area sustainable. The contribution starts from careful analysis of the rural peri-urban areas of Tuscany, polarized between two apparently conflicting dynamics between them (use of land abandonment and agricultural soils), to develop a reflection about the possibility of experiencing urban regeneration processes that include in inside them, innovative forms for the design of open spaces, with the aim both to recover a portion of depressed urban areas both to create new public spaces, modeled according to the forms of multifunctional agriculture and identitarian landscape [. An urban regeneration directed not only to the built space, but also to the open space and to the promotion of effective projectuality through proper analysis of services, which could be offered by rural areas and serve needs expressed by residents

Small farms’ strategies between self-provision and socio-economic integration: effects on food system capacity to provide food and nutrition security

Small farms’ contribution to food and nutrition security (FNS) is widely acknowledged; however, the diversity of context-specific characteristics of small farms is still barely documented in terms of farm strategies and household dynamics. The paper analyses this contribution in connection with the strategies related to the destination of the produce, with specific attention to the balance between food self-provisioning and economic integration. The analysis of self-provisioning relies on the assumptions that (i) production and consumption decisions cannot be analysed separately when they are attributed to the same entity and that (ii) family farm strategic choices are influenced by both business outcomes and household’’s welfare. The analysis of economic integration hinges on Polanyi’’s categories of market, reciprocity and redistribution as the three main modes of economic integration of a farm within its environment. We have collected information from a range of farmers in the Lucca province (northern Tuscany, Italy) and key stakeholders, through interviews, focus groups and field visits. The results of our analysis highlight the different ways small farms’ contribution to FNS in relation to each mode of economic integration adopted by the small farms. The different forms of this contribution can be identified at two levels: (i) internal to the farming household and (ii) external (i.e. referred to the community and broader society). A concept of food quality encompassing local sustainability, cultural heritage and social cohesion, is crucial to valorise, through appropriate policies, the specificities of small farms’ contribution to FNS