Search

The recent COVID-19 emergency has shaped economic performance across all sectors, and the fisheries and aquaculture sector did not come out unscathed. The need to protect against risks has always been primary for economic operators, but COVID-19 has accentuated the need to obtain coverage for health risks. In this regard, the European Union has moved quickly with an amendment art. 35 of European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (Regulation [EU] No. 508/2014), including "public health crises" among the causes considered valid for compensation in mutual funds. In this paper, we analyze the evolution of Regulation 508, focusing on Article 35 and its most recent amendments, to understand if the new reform is adherent to the needs of the fisheries sector in Italy, one of the only two States that have documented in their Operational Plans the intention to implement mutual funds. The work involved an empirical analysis through the use of multivariate statistics carried out on 61 Italian stakeholders. Several company profiles were identified and then the likelihood of subscribing to a mutual fund was estimated based on their focus on health crises. The work underlines that the amendments meet the demands of the sector for improved mutual fund clauses, but it’s not yet an attractive tool for the Italian market.

Gender differences in rural enterprise are a relevant field of analysis which calls for a deeper investiga-tion concerning key variables affecting farm’s performance and on the basis of gender. This paper tries to explore eventual gender gaps in the farms of Italy. Two variables are investigated: “Who” variable discriminate farm’s manager on the basis of gender under a constituent perspective of female entrepre-neurship. “Where” context is articulated in business, social and spatial context, with the aim of excavat-ing the multiple dimensions of farm entrepreneurship. In order to bring out the differences between male and female condominium farms in Italy, an econometric model was applied, with the aim of identifying context-related differences. The results confirm gender gaps related to farm performance, networking, diversification strategies and access to rural policies, by enlightening diverse paths of development in rural enterprises on the basis of explanatory variables. Therefore, adopted methodology reveals its utility in explaining gender gaps and addressing targeted policy implication at the beginning of a new program-ming era for the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU. ,, , Vecchio

The factors affecting the demand for agricultural insurance in the USA have been extensively studied over the last two decades. However, the determinants of a farm's entry and exit decisions in the insurance market have received relatively little attention. Turnover in the insurance book of business is an important issue in most private and public crop insurance plans. Moreover, insurance markets in the EU are still largely under-investigated. We investigate empirically the determinants of crop insurance participation in Italy. We show that the participation rate is high for large firms and that it is negatively correlated with crop diversification, which is itself a form of insurance. High premiums tend to inhibit both entry and exit from the insurance market. Larger and wealthier farms are more likely to adopt insurance and renew coverage over time. We discuss implications of our results for public intervention and the private industry. In particular, we demonstrate that the decision to drop coverage by an insured grower may differ significantly from the corresponding decision to enroll in an insurance programme by an uninsured farmer. To the extent that policymakers want to encourage participation in subsidized crop insurance programmes, education and outreach efforts toward uninsured farmers may differ substantially from those directed toward keeping insured farmers enrolled in the programme. We investigate these differences.

The changing environment affects agriculture introducing sources of uncertainty. On the other hand, policies to cope with risks may have strong impacts on the environment. We evaluate the effects of public risk management programmes, such as subsidised crop insurance, fertilizer use and land allocation to crops. We implement a mathematical programming model of a representative wheat-tomato farm in Puglia, a southern Italy region. The results show that under the current crop insurance programmes, tomato productions are expected to expand and to require larger amount of fertilizer, whereas the opposite is true for wheat productions. Policy and environmental implications are discussed.

Rapid environmental changes can affect agriculture by introducing additional sources of uncertainty. Conversely, policy interventions to help farmers cope with risks can induce strong impacts on the environment. In this paper, the authors evaluate the effects of public risk management programmes, particularly subsidies on crop insurance, on fertilizer use and land allocation. They implement a mathematical programming model based on data collected from 1,092 farms in the Puglia region of southern Italy. The results show that, under the current crop insurance programmes, input use is expected to increase, while the effect on production is likely to be crop-specific. The policy and environmental implications of subsidies on crop insurance are discussed.

In the Italian market, voluntary certifications implying higher levels of animal welfare generally fall into wider production schemes. Despite of the results of EU surveys indicating that about 50% of Italian consumers can easily identify and find animal-friendly products, they still are distributed scarcely or discontinuously in the main retail chains. To assess the apparent contradiction between the intricate information consumers receive from labels and their declared awareness about animal welfare, a survey was conducted in Emilia Romagna region on 355 Italian consumers (face-to-face interviews based on a structured, semi-close-ended questionnaire). Overall, consumers showed a low degree of knowledge about animal welfare attributes, animal farming conditions and animal protection policies (about 30% of correct answers), and a low level of awareness of the effects of their purchasing choices on the welfare of farmed animals (22%). The respondents also showed difficulties in identifying animal-friendly products and often confused them with other certified foods, having sometimes a weak connection (or none at all) to animal welfare (e.g., Protected Designation of Origin products). However, most consumers declared to be ready to pay a premium price in name of animal welfare. In conclusion, a labelling system for the welfare content of animal-derived foods is confirmed to be an effective strategy to compensate the efforts of farmers in improving animal welfare, provided that the information given is clear and able to fill the substantial lack of consumer knowledge.

La profonda evoluzione dei sistemi agricoli negli ultimi anni hanno accresciuto l'attenzione di tutti gli attori istituzionali ed economici rispetto alla problematica dell'accesso al credito per le imprese. Nel passato molto spesso il credito in agricoltura ha usufruito di regimi "speciali"; con l'implementazione delle regole di Basilea 2 (più di recente Basilea 3), le condizioni per l'accesso al credito si sono notevolmente irrigidite. Nell'ambito del settore agricolo, la pressoché assenza di bilanci certificati rende particolarmente difficoltosa questa valutazione. Nel presente lavoro, dopo aver analizzato la letteratura in materia di valutazione del merito creditizio delle aziende agricole, viene proposto un approccio metodologico innovativo, capace di cogliere maggiormente i fattori rilevanti per l'attività di funzionamento delle imprese del settore primario. Questo approccio è stato testato, nell'analisi empirica, con un campione costante estratto dalla banca dati RICA.