Graziella Benedetto

Life Cycle Assessment in the Cereal and Derived Products Sector

This chapter discusses the application of life cycle assessment methodologies to rice, wheat, corn and some of their derived products. Cereal product systems are vital for the production of commodities of worldwide importance that entail particular environmental hot spots originating from their widespread use and from their particular nature. It is thus important for tools such as life cycle assessment (LCA) to be tailored to such cereal systems in order to be used as a means of identifying the negative environmental effects of cereal products and highlighting possible pathways to overall environmental improvement in such systems. Following a brief introduction to the cereal sector and supply chain, this chapter reviews some of the current cereal-based life cycle thinking literature, with a particular emphasis on LCA. Next, an analysis of the LCA methodological issues emerging from the literature review is carried out. The following section of the chapter discusses some practices and approaches that should be considered when performing cereal-based LCAs in order to achieve the best possible results. Conclusions are drawn in the final part of the chapter and some indications are given of the main hot spots in the cereal supply chain.

Life Cycle Assessment in the Wine Sector

Currently, stakeholders’ increasing attention to quality is driving the wine sector to rethink and change its own production processes. Amongst product quality dimensions, the environment is gaining ever-growing attention at various levels of policy-making and business. Given its soundness, the use of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has become widespread in many application contexts. Apart from applications for communication purposes, LCA has also been used in the wine sector to highlight environmental hot spots in supply chains, to compare farming practices and to detect improvement options, inter alia. Case studies whose focus is the wine industry abound in high quality publications.

Social-life cycle assessment as an extended tool for the measurement of the social responsibility in the agro-food sector

The growing attention of consumers to the social and environmental aspects associated with the production of agro-industrial goods is a key driver for leading companies. The attention to social and environmental issues increases the added value of a company. A useful tool that can measure the Social Responsibility of a business is the Social-Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA). The aim of this paper is to suggest a better diffusion of the S-LCA implementation in the agri-food sector, since the social dimensions of sustainability have still limited application worldwide. This scope is in line with the literatures recommendation to carry out more case studies to improve the methodology and highlight where the S-LCA is weak. The paper includes two stages: firstly a description of the methodology is proposed; secondly we will present the results of some studies, focused on the agro-industrial sector, to see what information can be drawn from S-LCA implementation.

The Role of Women in the Sustainability of the Wine Industry: Two Case Studies in Italy

The chapter aims at analyzing whether female entrepreneurs have some distinctive capacities than men in managing business within the Italian wine industry and if these skills are useful for the sustainability of their farms and the whole sector. After the sketch of the women situation in the Italian agriculture and in the wine sector, we have analyzed two case studies located in two wine regions, Tuscany and Sardinia, by having meetings and interviewing two wine women. The two regions are quite different for the general condition of winemaking and for the internationally perceived image. Furthermore, the two informants have different family histories and manage different dimensioned farms. Our findings are that these two female entrepreneurs, even starting from different general conditions, have been able to use their own leading capabilities in the improvement of business and in collective regional and national initiative of wine promotion. Basing economic decisions on formal and/or contextual training, they have introduced innovations in farming, winemaking, and marketing in a specific way. We can say they have been someway slower, less hasty, and even more effective than men in involving collaborators with a charismatic heading and attracting other entrepreneurs in doing business. The role of women in farming has been too long underrated by society and the policymakers, who, on the contrary, should provide more specific attentions to the female capacity to foster the sustainability of their own farms and the wine Italian industry.

The Stakeholder Analysis: A Contribution Toward Improving Impact of Rural Policy

Since more than a decade agricultural economists pay more attention to CAP’s effects evaluation as a consequence of a larger social request for understanding what impacts are generated by the adoption of Rural Development Policy. The EU 2020 strategy fosters a political shift from the market liberalization processes toward policies promoting stability and equity, in addition to environment protection and social inclusion. Thus, CAP will have to be better evaluated by both quantitative and qualitative tools in order to understand the role of local communities in RDP implementation. In studying the role of wine tourism, in particular the successful case of Young Wines Exhibition of Sardinia and the failure of the “Verdicchio di Matelica” Wine Road (Ancona), the use of stakeholder analysis has shown positive contribution in evaluating the role of social actors in success/failure of RDP implementation. This work aims at discussing the necessity to use a more holistic evaluation method, mainly focusing on possibilities and difficulties of involving local social actors and policymakers.