Assessing motivations and perceptions of stakeholders in urban agriculture: a review and analytical framework

Interest in the adoption of urban agriculture (UA) has grown in recent years. The compatibility of UA with the urban social context, in particular with urban stake- holders' attitudes, is crucial for its successful implementation and represents one of the key factors influencing its development. To this end, a literature review on different approaches to analysing stakeholders' and farmers' perceptions of UA is performed. The paper identifies the main approaches to assessing these aspects and designs an integrated framework to support the development of context-tailored analytical approaches for UA drivers' and stakeholder perceptions. The study aims to address and solve potential conflicts between UA practitioners and urban stake- holders and adapt the implementation of UA to contextual factors. This increases the possibility of developing successful UA strategies that meet the challenges currently facing urban food systems

An Analytical Approach to Support Urban Agriculture Policies Development: Case Study of Barcelona

The increasing impact due to urban population\u2019s food supply causes a series of negative externalities related to food production, transformation and transportation. FAO and other institutions are trying to integrate traditional models of food supply with alternative ones like Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture (UPA). Defining the drivers that motivate the participation in different types of UPA could be useful to plan more participated and effective UPA development policies. Barcelona (Spain) hosts a number of cases representing different declinations that UPA can assume. This work aims at describing the differences in terms of motivations to enter the various typologies of Urban Agriculture (UA) in Barcelona. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews to 4 groups of users representing 3 of the most widespread models of UA initiatives in Barcelona (Allotment Gardens, Community Gardens, Pla Buits.) The results showed that participation in UA is mainly motivated by relational aspects and knowledge exchange and differences exist among the various UA models. Political reasons are mostly influencing the Community Gardeners while Pla Buits users\u2019 mains motivations are related to socialising and Allotment gardeners are mainly motivated by environmental aspects. Differences in the participants\u2019 demographic characteristics also emerged. Better targeted public policies contents and communication strategies for UPA development can thus be derived by the results obtained; to this end, recommendations have been provided. Further research should broaden the range of case studies and the sample size, in order to provide a more effective and comprehensive tool for tailoring UPA developing strategies to different contexts

Feasibility Study on a Decentralised System Architecture for Animal Transport Tracing Systems (DEAR-TRACE)

The objective of the study was to demonstrate whether the data recorded by the tracing systems of long journey animal transport vehicles for the official controls under Regulation 1/2005 and managed by different private service providers for trucks fitted with their systems could be made remotely available to competent authorities in this decentralised system architecture. The concept was tested for around 2 months with 2 tracing systems from different service providers, with volunteering transport companies using these systems and with the participation of competent authorities in 3 Member States with a substantial share in the international animal transport. Overall the experiment proved that with limited software development resources the integration of commercial tracing systems in animal transports would be feasible and offer several advantages to the competent authorities both in respect of animal welfare and traceability of animal movement.JRC.DG.G.4-Maritime affair

On-Farm Mortality in Cattle

The present study was aimed at exploring if and on what extent on-farm mortality, which is regularly notified in national cattle databases in the EU, could be used to design an early warning system for emerging diseases in cattle. The statistical analysis of mortality rates recorded in Italy in 2008 showed a clear influence by transport, age, sex and season. Through spatial and spatio-clustering methods several geographic area with exceptionally high mortality rates were detected. A more in-dept analysis of individual causes of mortality in the Provinces of Trento and Bolzano showed that on-farm mortality was greatly influenced by management practices and economic conditions. In order to control some of the influencing management factors a model was created to compare for a given population the actual and expected mortality rates. A conclusion of the study was that on-farm mortality regularly notified in national livestock databases could represent an important indicator for evaluating herd management practices. Further analysis and refinement of the applied models would be needed in order to establish a robust method for the detection of anomalous events with respect to the outbreak of animal diseasesJRC.DG.G.7-Traceability and vulnerability assessmen