Rino Ghelfi

Food Chains and Value System: The Case of Potato, Fruit, and Cheese

The aim of the article is to analyse patterns of value system sharing along food chains, so as to explore the agrifood enterprises capacity to be competitive and sustainable. The research focused on three food chains: potato, fruit, and Grana cheese of the Emilia Romagna region. The article adopts the value system approach. The methodology is aimed at creating a consolidated financial statement for each food chain so as to re-create the chain operating profit and identify how this is shared among the different food chain stages. The analysis is carried out on 189 enterprises for the potato chain, 187 for the fruit chain, and 203 for the cheese chain. The number of enterprises was invariable over five years (2003–2007), leading to 2,900 financial statement analysis. The chains analysed show differences. In the potato and fruit chains 35% of value is created by distribution, whereas in the cheese chain only, it is 13.6%. Over the five years, value decreases 5% in fruit and potato and 9% in cheese. The lack of adequate strategic food chain partnership allows an increasing retail market power over the whole chain at the expense of the primary sector entailing a declining sustainability for all chain actors.

A Comparative Profitability Analysis of Organic and Conventional Farms in Emilia-Romagna and in Minnesota

Recent discussion surrounding organic agriculture (also referred to as organic farming) has turned from just whether it represents a viable alternative to conventional agriculture to whether it would be adopted by a significant percentage of farmers. After a beginning phase in which the adoption was mainly due to an ethically based choice of the farmer, the success in the market and the increasing demand for organic products are increasing the number of farmers converting their farming system. Despite the continuing importance of non-economic factors and the uncertainty given by short-term and mid-term fluctuations of prices, a decisive point is whether the conversion to organic farming may be worthwhile from an economic perspective. The aim of the paper is to compare the actual profitability of farms using organic production methods to those farms using conventional production methods. The analysis will be based on several data-sets, provided on the Italian side by Emilia-Romagna Region, Italian National Institute of Agricultural Economics (INEA), Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat), and on the US side by the Center for Farm Financial Management (CFFM) in the Department of Applied Economics, University of Minnesota.

Diversification pathways and farming systems: Insights from the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy:

The study analyzes and explains on-farm diversification in Emilia-Romagna, a productive and agriculturally intensified region in Italy. The purpose was to contribute to knowledge gaps on the adoption of different diversification strategies in relation to farming system. Based on farm-level census data gathered by the Italian National Institute of Statistics during the sixth general agricultural census, two on-farm diversification pathways were investigated: deepening and broadening. The farmer’s decision to diversify activities and the identification of diversification pathways were analyzed using logit and multinomial logit models. The results show that arable farms adopt broadening strategies, intensive farms opt for deepening ones, and specialized adopters of quality schemes combine both strategies. Furthermore, in contrast to the existing research, the study highlights that intensive farms are more likely than arable farms to diversify. Finally, the findings provide insights to improve analyses in the context of policy and regional strategic support.

A Dual Approach to Evaluating the Agricultural Productivity of Fruit Farms in Emilia-Romagna

Productivity analysis is a frequent topic on the agenda for many researchers, whose efforts are focused on establishing adequate measurement criteria and then applying them to specific case studies. Based on accountancy micro-data for 2000 to 2009 for a group of fruit-growing farms, the purpose of this study was to verify the similarity between two methods of productivity measurement: the total factor productivity (TFP) index and the Malmquist index. The results broadly confirm the substantial congruence of the two indices and show an increase in the productivity of fruit farms in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. However, the results should be carefully interpreted, since the productivity fluctuations during the decade suggest that this kind of analysis should be conducted using medium to long-term time-series data. Furthermore, the TFP index seems to be generally higher than the Malmquist index, implying that these measures are suitable for an overview of trends rather than exact measures of productivity.

The Role of Members' Commitment on Agri-Food Co-Operatives' Capitalization, Innovation and Performance

Undercapitalization has been recognized as a problem affecting Italian co-operatives to perform in modern agri-food markets. An empirical study on 50 Italian agri-food co-operatives was carried out to investigate co-operatives members’ commitment capability to impact on the level of capitalization. The level of capitalization was also investigated as a mean to influence co-operatives’ innovation and subsequently their performance. The results show how co-operatives with more committed memberships display higher levels of capitalization and that capitalization positively relates with innovation levels. The latter is also confirmed to enhance co-operatives’ performance. These results are relevant from a managerial point of view as they reveal the importance of members’ commitment in this particular type of organizations and provide new insights to improve co-operatives’ innovation and performance.

Pulses production in Italy: trade, marketing and policy issues

Italian pulses production has sharply fallen since the middle of the last century and the role that pulses played has diminished at both the agricultural and food levels. This is the result of several factors that are analysed in this article, among which the most important can be identified in the low profitability compared to other crops, mainly cereals, the historic collapse of domestic consumption and a strong competition from foreign producers. Conversely, in recent years, different signals appear to delineate a possible framework for recovery for legumes: the first of these is represented by the recent reversal trend in domestic consumption, due to healthy reasons and a fall in meat consumption. The favourable trend of organic consumption can also be considered as a positive factor for pulses. However, the focus point for pulses future perspective is the recent development of the European policy (2014-2020) that planned several actions in support of them, such as coupled payments and the provisions of greening rules. These policies aim to support the training effort needed to bring home to producers the importance of legumes in a proper crop rotation that maintains soil fertility and therefore better yields and profitability. In light of this and based on the general crisis in cereals prices, it is possible to be reasonably optimistic regarding the future of the legumes sector in Italy.

Inputs use in the agriculture of Emilia-Romagna: farm comparison through the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) index

Abstract In order to measure agriculture sustainability, the efficient use of inputs becomes a crucial issue. In this perspective, the analysts concentrate their attention on the total factor productivity index (TFP). In this view, Lynam and Herdt proposed the TFP as a suitable assessment of the sustainability of single crops, of cropping systems or of farming systems. Even if the TFP does not take into account the non-market output (social and environmental aspects), it is possible to argue that a negative trend of TFP represents a resource degradation if related to the generated outputs. On the other hand, the non-negative trend of TFP represents a fitting measure of a sustainable agricultural system and of an efficient use of the resources. The aim of the paper is to analyze the productivity in the use of external factors in different types of farming at the Emilia-Romagna Region level, that is specialist field crops, specialist permanent crops and specialist milk production farms. A significant number of indexing procedures is accessible to evaluate the efficiency in converting inputs into outputs. In this paper, the TFP is estimated through an indirect evaluation of the quantity index of outputs and inputs of each farming system taken into account in the analysis. Purposely, the amount of the total sales is considered as a measure of the output, whereas intermediate consumption are considered as a measure of the inputs to evaluate the productivity of external factors (PEF). The value of chemicals and the value of fodders and supplements was considered in order to compute the productivity of these specifics inputs. Data, referring to the period 2000–2009, are collected from the farm accountancy data network of the Emilia-Romagna Region DG Agriculture. The study highlights how the PEF measured through the TFP approach seems to be an effective way to evaluate the sustainability of the use of agricultural resources. Even if the limit of this approach comes from the complexity in understanding the real in depth causes of the productivity changing (e.g. technical efficiency, scale efficiency), the use of number index to evaluate the TFP seems to be simple and fitting for a first exploratory investigation.

Le trasformazioni del paesaggio nel territorio rurale: analisi integrata dei sistemi socio-demografici e insediativi

Le trasformazioni del paesaggio nel territorio rurale: analisi integrata dei sistemi socio-demografici e insediativi