Fabio A. Madau

• PhD in Agricultural Economics
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Sassari

Agriculture, livestock, and forestry are crucial in mitigating hydrogeological risks, such as floods, particularly severe in the Mediterranean region. Still, the ecosystem services (ESs) provided by these activities are often undervalued. However, to assign them an economic value and ensure their effective incorporation into decision-making process...

Crop and livestock farms are central to achieving the 2030 Agenda goals and a sustainable agri-food system. However, the transition toward a sustainable agri-food system requires optimizing several economic and environmental farm targets that, interacting with one another, would lead to win-win opportunities, at least as desired by the European Uni...

Agriculture and livestock farming significantly contribute to the success of all United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030 and are pivotal in the sustainability transition of the European agri-food sector. However, those sectors have been criticized for generating negative environmental externalities. In this context, adopting ind...

The rise in the world’s demand for fish is increasingly met by aquaculture. However, this sector still shows various criticalities in terms of sustainability of practices, first and foremost, that of feed availability. Nowadays, the use of insect meal represents one of the potential sustainable solutions, but consumption intention of fish fed with...

Consumers’ behavior towards sea urchin and preferences towards their origin certification and place of consumption may condition their market. In this context, the aim of this research was to elicit the preferences and perceptions of Italian sea urchin dishes using a discrete choice experiment (DCE) approach. A field survey of 453 respondents in Ap...

Agriculture and the agri-food industry are central to fostering economic growth and the Sustainable Development Goals' targets. However, to meet the world's future development, it is necessary to make the agri-food system more resource-efficient. The transition towards the circular economy (CE) paradigm is commonly seen as a promising strategy to o...

Dairy sheep farming systems provide a great range of ecosystem services (ESs) and social services (SSs). These are Agro-pastoral Secondary Outputs (ASOs), the promotion of which can help the survival of the systems and the rural regions in which they exist. However, little attention has been paid to understanding which ASOs are recognized by the pu...

The importance of aquaculture in reducing pressure on wild stocks in the seas and meeting the demand for fish worldwide has increased greatly in recent years. However, sustainability of the sector can be jeopardized by the incessant use of fish meal as the main source of feed. For this reason, replacing, even partially, fish meal with other feeds s...

Farms that operate in less favoured areas (LFAs) often suffer in achieving adequate profits. Diversification strategies, such as direct selling and offering recreational services, can play an important role in integrating earning sources and, as a consequence, increasing farm profitability. Such opportunities would depend on the efficient distribut...

Several studies have focused attention on the differences between organic and conventional farms in terms of efficiency, and controversial findings have resulted from these applications. One source of controversy concerns the assumption about the frontier(s) adopted for the comparison: a common frontier or two separate frontiers for organic and con...

Today, the transition to a more sustainable model of the agro-food system is increasingly impellent, requiring all actors’ commitment. In particular, small and medium agro-food business (SMABs) play a decisive and central role in the food and economies of national and underdeveloped areas. Our study aims to identify, through desk research, the leve...

Insect meal could represent an option for partial replacement of fishmeal, the quantity and price of which are a constraint to the expansion of aquaculture. In this article, the acceptance of insect meal as a feed component among Italian farmers of trout and seabass is investigated and discussed. Semi‐structured interviews have been conducted with...

The faster increasing of agritourism in the European countries leads to thinking this form of farm diversification as a valid instrument to enhance the rural areas. Numerous personal and social motivations lead the choice of starting an agritourism. However, the agritourism should be understood as firm and must be able to be profitable in the long-...

The studies focused on the use of insects have outlined numerous reasons for using insects as food and feed as an important method to increase food opportunities for consumers. Insects have been emphasized as a food source with a low environmental impact due to the limited requirement for arable land and water, low ecological cost, and high-quality...

The economic and environmental sustainability of aquaculture depends significantly on the nature and quality of the fish feed used. One of the main criticisms of aquaculture is the need to use significant amounts of fish meal, and other marine protein sources, in such feed. Unfortunately, the availability of the oceanic resources, typically used to...

Recreational functions are among the most important practices to improve farmers’ income and to promote sustainability in the rural territories. Two crucial issues are the ability to rationally allocate farm resources and the ability to efficiently produce different sorts of food and non-food goods. Possible cost savings due to the co-presence of d...

L’olivo, simbolo e tradizione millenaria della Sardegna, rappresenta la coltura arborea da frutto maggiormente diffusa nella regione, caratterizzando gli aspetti paesaggistici, culturali e agroalimentari di gran parte dei comuni isolani. In quest’ambito l’olivo da mensa occupa oggi spazi piuttosto limitati, ma con produzioni di eccellenza qualitati...

Mediterranean fisheries are characterized by differentiated fishing systems implemented by companies of different sizes and types. On the other hand, small scale fishing is the most important characteristic when one tries to find the main differences with oceanic fisheries. Small-sized family fishing firms play an important role in several local co...

Land, food, energy, water and climate are linked and interconnected into a Nexus, characterized by complexity and feedbacks. An integrated management of the Nexus is critical to understand conflicts/synergies and secure efficient and sustainable use of resources, especially under climate change. The Nexus perspective is applied to Sardinia, as regi...

This paper aims to evaluate the technical efficiency and the total factor productivity change of dairy farms in EU countries. Analyses were carried out in order to determine which countries showed the best performance adaptations when the quota regime was relaxed and to evaluate the technical conditions of European farmers at the starting point of...

Sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) fishery is intensively practiced in several areas of the Mediterranean basin. In Sardinia, as well as other Mediterranean countries, sea urchin is a basic ingredient for several dishes due to the delicacy of its gonads (roe), and demand is constantly increasing. Restrictions have been implemented in order to minim...

Purpose – Buyer power can be defined as the ability to obtain trade terms more favourable than a supplier’s normal trade terms. The purpose of this paper is to estimate existence of buyer power in the Italian market of fresh milk. The sector is characterised by high industrial and retail firms concentration and a significant gap between the downstr...

Sheep farming plays a large role in some specific economies, maintains strong links with natural resources, and produces multiple functions in rural areas. Its sustainability has to deal with different purposes. This study aims to assess economic and environmental sustainability of extensive dairy sheep farming in Sardinia. A case study approach wa...

Several studies have compared technical efficiency estimates derived from parametric and non parametric approaches, whereas a very small number of studies have aimed to compare scale efficiency estimations. This paper aims to estimate technical and scale efficiency in the Italian citrus farming. Estimation was carried out using both Data Envelopmen...

In Sardinia sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) roe is a basic ingredient for several dishes (e.g. pasta, pizza, croutons) and its demand is constantly increasing. However marketable value of local sea urchin appears to be potentially higher than the current value. This paper aims to estimate the value of a based sea urchin dish according to the sta...

This paper aims to analyze how sustainability in European agriculture might evolve in the long run, depending on which different policy scenarios are used. Particular attention is paid to the role played by the “new challenges” which are the policy aims of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013: climate change; safeguarding biodiversity; r...

Sardinia (Italy) is one of the most important European regions for sheep dairy and sheep milk cheese production. However the Sardinian sheep dairy industry is currently going through a dramatic crisis, and verifying whether it can recover part of its profitability is now a priority. Attention is now focused on estimating whether the sheep dairy fir...

This paper aims to carry out a first-pass estimation of the power wielded by large-scale retail organisations in the Italian agri-food system, by using the olive oil supply chain as a representative case study. An econometric price transmission model suggests that farmers suffer from big retail’s market power in the olive oil sector. Nevertheless,...

Landscape preservation is an important issue of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) today. Deeply rooted characteristics of land use in rural areas can be affected by food and land market changes as well as by specific policy decisions. Forests are an important part of rural landscape: their role in environment preservation as well as in space sup...

This paper aims to carry out a first-pass estimation of the power wielded by large-scale retail organisations in the Italian agri-food system, by using the olive oil supply chain as a representative case study. An econometric price transmission model suggests that farmers suffer from big retail's market power in the olive oil sector. Nevertheless,...

Several studies have compared technical efficiency estimates derived from paramet-ric and non parametric approaches, whereas a very small number of studies have aimed to compare scale efficiency estimations. This paper aims to estimate technical and scale efficiency in the Italian citrus farming. Estimation was carried out using both Data En-velopm...

Big Food Retail and Power: an economic-political estimation. Increasing market power of big retail into the agro-food supply chain depends on economic, institutional, cultural and policy factors. It is a multi-faceted issue that moves us to take into account not only the economic aspects but the social, policy, psychological and behavioural ones, t...

Ray (1998) has proposed a model for estimating scale efficiency using a parametric approach. Following this methodology, a scale efficiency measure is obtained from the estimated parameters of the production frontier function and from the estimated scale elasticities. This study aims to estimate technical and scale efficiencies achieved by the Ital...

This study aims to estimate technical and scale efficiency in the Italian citrus farming. A DEA model was applied on a sample of 107 citrus farms in order to obtain output-oriented measures of efficiency. Results suggest that citrus farmers would be able to increase output by about 30% using their disposable resources more effectively (at the prese...

Questo lavoro nasce dalla collaborazione tra INEA e Gestione Commissariale ex Agensud, che hanno dato vita al progetto di “Assistenza tecnica e supporto agli Enti concessionari nel settore dell’uso irriguo delle risorse idriche”. Il progetto costituisce la prosecuzione e l’approfondimento di precedenti studi effettuati dall’INEA (“Studio sull’uso i...

This paper aims to assess how sustainability in European agriculture might evolve in the long run, depending on which different policy scenarios are used. Particular attention is paid to the role played by the “new challenges” which are the policy aims of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013: climate change; safeguarding biodiversity; ra...

To design an effective capacity management plan for small-scale fisheries one must understand what one is measuring and define its capacity. As recognized by some authors, overcapacity is a problem that generally affects small-scale fisheries just as much as it does other types of fishing. This study aims to estimate fishing capacity, technical eff...

The paper presents some results from a stated-preference study that compares three samples of urban consumers of extra-virgin olive oil from three representative Italian cities: Naples (South), Rome (Centre) and Milan (North). A series of multinomial logit models are estimated from choice experiments responses and tested for unobserved heterogeneit...

This paper presents some results from a wider research on economic and environmental sustainability of organic farming. It aims to compare organic and conventional farming in order to identify some of the main differences between those groups of farms that participated in the official Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN)-2003. The study is organize...

Organic food demand is becoming increasingly important throughout the world. Despite this relevance, however, not many attempts have been carried out to profile this food market segment. This paper aims to investigate on motivations that drive consumers towards purchasing organic foods in Italy. Through a survey carried out in some organic speciali...

A stochastic frontier production model was applied to estimate technical efficiency in a sample of Italian organic and conventional cereal farms. The main purpose was to assess which production technique revealed higher efficiency. Statistical tests on the common production function model suggested that the two cultivation methods might lie on diff...

qualità delle produzioni agricole biologiche Atti del 3' Workshop sull'Agticoltura Biologica organizzato dal Gruppo di Ricerca Agricolturc Biologica ltalia (GRAB-IT) Roma, Palazzo Rospigliosi 22 maggio 2007 A cura di Raffaele Zanoli

This paper shows some results arisen from a wider research on economic and environmental sustainability of organic farming. It focuses on organic and conventional farming comparison through an investigation of Italian FADN data. In order to identify some of the main differences between organic and conventional farms a “distance analysis” has been c...

A stochastic frontier production model was applied to estimate technical efficiency in a sample of Italian organic and conventional cereal farms. The main purpose was to assess which production technique revealed higher efficiency. Statistical tests on the pool sample model suggested that differences between the two cultivation methods were signifi...

Over recent years considerable research has been devoted to the assessment of the rural landscape value. These studies have concerned both use and non-use value estimation. An important issue in monetary evaluations is about taking (or not) into account the structural complexity of landscape. Three analytical approaches may be recognized on the bas...

Projections indicate the world is entering a new era of tighter food supply relative to demand than in recent decades. Although urban areas in the U.S. occupy only 3 percent of the nation's land, the average state supplies too small a share of global food needs to motivate it to preserve land for food security. Citizens like open spaces, but scenic...

This paper aims to put on evidence data, trend and informations on world market of olive and olive-oil. Specific attention is put on the Italian sector and on the role of Italy into the world market.

In the last decade, relevance of organic products into the food demand is constantely increasing. It is common opinion that a good contribute in affecting organic food purchases is due to the Large Retail. In the light of this considerations, this paper aims to investigate if and in which measure some of the typical strategies adopted by the Italia...

This paper aims to put on evidence data, trend and informations on world market of olive and olive-oil. Specific attention is put on the Italian sector and on the role of Italy into the world market.