Roberto Furesi

• 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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,...

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...

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...

This paper is designed to verify empirically the choices that Italian farm households make when investing in human capital. Census data from the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) were used to describe the main structural and organisational characteristics of the farms. Multivariate statistical tools were used to process the information in th...

The analysis of contract choice is here related to the contracting nature of the hybrid governance structures. The approach of the empirical analysis is concerned with the transaction between farmers and processor in poultry supply chains and it is based upon a choice experiment to estimate the marginal values of contract attributes. Final remarks...

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...