Teaching precision farming and entrepreneurship for European students: Sparkle online course

Within the framework of the European project named ‘SPARKLE’, an online course was created after studying educational needs on precision agriculture (PA), state of the art of technologies and a prospective study of the commercial sector. Five educational and research institutions, high-tech farms and enterprises specializing in technology transfer created the syllabus of the course and the platform contents. The course was designed to provide 30 h of student dedication, via online presentations, documents and videos for each topic. A free pilot course started in April 2020 and 385 students from Italy, Portugal, Greece & Spain enrolled. To trace performance and acquisition of competences, questionnaires were completed by students for each topic and a final overall test. Students’ opinions about the course were also registered using anonymous polls, and results evaluated, to be able to enhance the Sparkle course for subsequent editions. Students also took part in a business model competition, to solve real challenges proposed by farms, related to the use of these technologies

Facets of value emerging through the operation of short food supply chains

Short food supply chains (SFSCs) are market schemes that allow different types of value to emerge. In this work, we aimed to uncover these facets of value. To do so, we built upon two conceptual models: a Triple Layered Business Model Canvas and an eight-dimensional blueprint developed for our purposes. Then, we conducted two studies using these models as theoretical templates. In Study I, we followed a business model canvas perspective, aiming to portray the components that contribute to the generation of economic, functional, and social value produced in SFSCs. By drawing on a sample of farmers who participate in SFSCs, we developed regression models to uncover the antecedents of value. Our analysis revealed that the effectiveness of performed activities catalyses the economic value of SFSCs. In addition, the social value depends on the capacity of SFSCs to enhance local communities’ well-being and provide significant outreach. Finally, environmental value is associated with the distribution of products. In Study II, using data from a pool of experts, we assessed the importance of eight facets of value. Participants appraised economic, social, cultural, and environmental value as more important than the remaining dimensions. Our studies shed light on the dimensions of value created in SFSCs, also confirming the usefulness of business model canvases for understanding value creation processes. However, our work also offers a new framework for conceptualising supply chains’ value, distinguishing value into primary (which is produced and remains within SFSCs) and secondary (which extends beyond supply chain limits)

Beyond ‘food apartheid’: Civil society and the politicization of hunger in New Haven, Connecticut

This article illuminates the extent of community-based activism around food justice in New Haven, CT. Data was gathered through 28 in-depth interviews with civil society actors and participant observation across the food policy and urban agriculture (UA) sectors in the Fall of 2018. The paper traces the challenges that the sector faces in advancing a more democratic food agenda even when the municipality is relatively open to activist claims. Three key findings are identified. (a) Following in the American communitarian tradition, civil society groups working at grassroots level largely set the agenda for tackling food hunger in New Haven. That agenda, however, is broad-based and contradictory, incorporating initiatives aimed at addressing food insecurity and radical advocacy for food justice. (b) The efforts of civil society actors are structurally constrained by their dependence on philanthropic or grant based funding, on the one hand, and the symbolic rather than substantive support afforded by a fiscally weak, resource-poor municipality, on the other. (c) There is an inherent tension within the civil society sector arising from the disjuncture between strategies that have the effect of depoliticizing hunger and those that increasingly demand a repoliticization of hunger. These issues have been brought into sharper relief in light of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and the 2020 Black Lives Matter (BLM) mobilization, which, in concert, expose deep fissures in American society