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Bioeconomy is an emerging concept and no commonly accepted definition has been given so far. Bioeconomy strategies attempt to cover every aspect of this emerging concept from a different perspective, depending on the country, region, or organisation issuing them. For these reasons, each strategy has its own priority fields depending on the economic, geomorphological, social, ecological, and technological conditions of each country. In this review, an attempt is made to study the priority fields of bioeconomy strategies through a systematic review of the literature. PRISMA analysis was used to review the literature on the priority fields of bioeconomy strategies. The review examined the issue in the rich academic literature of two databases, Scopus and AgEcon. Using a repeatable search process to identify relevant studies in the literature, only 68 publications met the eligibility criteria that were included in the review. The results show that there are trends in the priority fields of bioeconomy strategies in the years 2013–2022. Moreover, the economic and technological development of the respective countries foreshadows their priorities. A successful transition to a bioeconomic model requires the participation of society as a whole, because a sustainable society as a whole requires sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions. The study concludes that governance with global coordination and stakeholder training is needed for successful implementation of bioeconomy strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The economic and social problems, including high unemployment, facing the Greek economy in recent years are substantial. The role of the agri-food sector and agriculture in dealing with unemployment is a concern. To support the agricultural economy, a Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2007–2014 was adopted and implemented in the EU Member States. However, boosting employment, in the industry itself and indirectly in the economy, has almost never been a key goal of any policy. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the CAP 2014–2020 in maintaining and enhancing employment and income distribution in the region of Central Macedonia. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used the regional social accounting matrix (SAM), which examines the depiction of the interconnections between the sectors of economic activity and local economy (households, businesses, public) but also interconnections and transactions with the rest of the world. The SAM presents a more complete picture of the economic figures of the region, evaluating the interconnections of cross-sectoral relations and the implemented policies, both in the production sectors and in the regional society. Findings: For the Central Macedonia region, the agricultural sector is a key player, holding a regulatory role for regional economic viability, and shows marked connections with the other industry branches of the region. Originality/value: The new CAP 2014–2020 through Pillar 2–Rural Development may reinforce the new role of the industry in terms of the environment, integrated rural development and social structure of rural areas, ensuring coherence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

European Islands have specific characteristics in relation to the mainland that led the European Union to the establishment of the 'Programme of Options Specifically Relating to Remoteness and Insularity-POSEI' and a programme with specific measures for the smaller Aegean islands (SAI). The study stresses key aspects of the programme and to assesses its effectiveness through its contribution to the local rural economy. Employing a regional Input-Output model, it is indicated that the economic contribution of the programme to the islands, is marginal and the key benefits are related directly to the beneficiaries as supplementary income and indirectly to the local economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In any turbulent economic environment, sectors of economic activity behave and resist differently depending on the causes of the turbulence. Some sectors present a unique resistance in economic aberrations, have a resilient attitude and play the role of the stabilizer, supporting growth and employment. Such sectors are usually related with people basic needs; in the current economic crisis, the agriculture and food sector stand out. The present study endeavours to examine the potentials of agriculture in promoting an integrated development in a regional rural economy, through capturing and recording its interconnections with other sectors of economic activity. Input-Output analysis was applied along with the construction of a regional model intending to examine both the contribution of the primary sector in the regional economy, as well as the impact of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform on the entire local economy. By employing an analytical tool, it is demonstrated that the impact of the new CAP is not limited to the primary sector, but it - directly and indirectly affects other sectors, as well as the total output, employment and household income of the region. Results suggest that agriculture is an important driver of growth throughout the region, contributing to the increase of the local gross output by approximately €300mil. only by the inflow of funds, while 14% of it is diffused into sectors other than agriculture. • The impact of the new Common Agricultural Policy is not limited to the primary sector. • Reduction in subsidies in the primary sector will cause a significant reduction in output, employment and household incomes. • Growth of the local economy should be based on the rational development of agriculture and livestock. • High indirect effects on the growth of household income due to the increase in agricultural output. • Important indirect effects on employment in sectors beyond agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The agri-food sector has been stressed as an essential determinant for an economy, as its impacts contribute directly and indirectly to its growth in various ways; with its products, with its trade, both in outputs and inputs, and when the sector grows. The current work aims to capture the relationships and impacts of the agri-food sector in a regional economy through linkage analysis. Building upon the relationship marketing theory, this is achieved by utilizing an I/O model constructed through modifying the Generation of Regional Input-Output Tables (GRIT) regionalization technique and using the Flegg Location Quotient (FLQ). The relationships of the economic sectors resulting from the purchases and sales between them provide helpful information for the region's economy. The results demonstrate that the agri-food-related sectors are closely linked in the regional economy, as the primary activities supply processing with raw inputs. Moreover, agri-food-related sectors have strong interconnections with the rest of the local economy and can induce economy-wide impacts. Accordingly, the interdependence between different economic sectors determines the agri-food sector's economic impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last ten years have witnessed an increase in publications focusing on bioeconomy as a proposal to confront the global challenges of climate change, depletion of non-renewable resources and ecosystem degradation. This paper investigates the scientific literature on issues related agricultural bioeconomy by applying a bibliometric network analysis. Bibliometric analysis is applied to the publications of the Scopus database during the period 2010–2020 in order to provide an overview of the main aspects that characterize agricultural bioeconomy. The results showed that out of a total of 1100 scientific papers, only 2.45% were published in 2010, while the corresponding share in 2020 was 20.81%. In the five years of 2016–2020, cumulatively, 70.63% of the publications were made, showing the dynamic evolution of bioeconomy. In addition, out of 85 countries in total, Germany and Italy are the two countries with most publications, while the fragmentation of research is evident with the creation of two main nodes, the European and the American. Moreover, keyword analysis showed that biomass and sustainability are two main recurring concepts, confirming that, currently, bioeconomy operates at three different levels: energy demand, land demand, and governance. It is apparent that to boost the development of agricultural bioeconomy, the following aspects should be assessed: the effective use of resources, an understanding of the key drivers of agricultural bioeconomy, and a clear perception of their associations. There is still no consensus as to which are the key factors that will accelerate its sustainable development. Our pursuit is to use the tools of bibliometric analysis to reach more critical conclusions regarding the agricultural bioeconomy, rather than approach it in a static way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The support of economic sectors that exploit natural bio-based resources in a particular region is an opportunity to benefit from local potentials in terms of sustainability, employment, output, and household income. Hence a relevant question emerges, namely, how can bioeconomy sectors be adequately supported? Within this context, another issue is whether the bioeconomy development strategy at a national level should be the same as that at a regional level. To address these issues, in the current study a comparison was made between the bioeconomy sectors at the country level based on the case study of Poland and one of the poorest regions in the European Union—the Lubelskie Region. A regional input–output model was built for the regional economy and compared with the national model. The bioeconomy-oriented regional input–output table was built by applying a hybrid regionalization method, combining non-survey techniques and a questionnaire survey that was carried out in companies of mixed bio-based sectors. Sectoral linkages, such as multipliers and elasticities, indicate notable differences among the bio-based sectors' potentials of the regional and national economies. Therefore, a bioeconomy development strategy should be seen to differ at national and regional levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the grounds of the long discussion in the literature for the construction of regional input–output (I/O) tables, the present study endeavors to identify the best performing method among the most applied location quotient based non-survey techniques. The analysis uses actual data—in particular, the EU input–output tables for the years 2010 and 2014—and by employing three different statistics, it compares the tables created by the quotients FLQ, AFLQ, SLQ, CILQ and RLQ. Comparison is made in both the technical coefficient tables and the Leontief ones. The results indicate that the AFLQ and FLQ provide better results for values of δ from 0.1 to 0.3, whereas for values of δ from 0.4 to 0.9, the results of the two quotients are not satisfactory. At the same time, using another statistic, the SLQ–CILQ technique seemed to yield satisfactory results. Similar results are also presented for the Leontief tables. Finally, using a linear regression model, the imports do not appear to be related to the value of δ in the FLQ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Optimal Bio Marine Fuel production from renewable and environmentally friendly resources. • Optimal raw materials mixtures using adaptive genetic algorithm. • Main ingredients: rap oil, sun oil, animal fat acid, olive oil cooked. • Ingredient Percentage Local Search exploring efficiently the area surrounding the optimal ingredients percentage. • Saving time and cost of a demanding experimental laboratory procedure. The present paper proposes an evolutionary computation based approach for solving raw materials mixtures optimization problems in Bio Marine Fuel (BMF) production. Last decades Biodiesel has become more attractive because it produced from renewable and environmentally friendly resources. The main ingredients of industrial biodiesel are rap oil, sun oil, animal fat acid, olive oil cooked. In this work, a new genetic algorithm is proposed which investigates initially the ingredients percentages in the mixtures, in order to optimally create their combinations as Biodiesel fuel. The optimal Biodiesel, in second phase, is used for the BMF production, without degrading the new fuel final quality. This new BMF has lower sulfur content and its consumption reducing the pollutant emissions. Apart from the environmental benefits that BMF provides, it is neither time consuming nor expensive as the desulphurization process. The innovation of the proposed approach is related to certain genetic operations applied like crossover for the improvement of the solution quality from generation to generation. Furthermore, the proposed solution can be produced in the laboratory, saving time and cost of a demanding experimental procedure. Detailed experiments with minimum and maximum ingredients cost produce highly accurate Biodiesel mixtures. The optimal mixture obtained by GA has been compared with 10 Biodiesel mixtures produced on Laboratory, in order to provide competitive fuel prices. In addition, 4 BMF categories have been examined. Categories which combine Biodiesel (B) and Marine Fuel (MF): 1) Mix 10%: B 10% + MF 90%, 2) Mix 15%: B 15% + MF 85%, 3) Mix 20%: B 20% + MF 80% and 4) Mix 25%: B 25% + MF 75%. GA results improve the BMF prices form 0.22% − 5.86% per liter. The experimental results of methodology proves capable of coping even with mixture optimization problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the Greek economic crisis, almost all businesses are facing difficult times with severe consequences for employment and the whole economy. Responding to the economic crisis, the companies cut off investments, wages and reduced personnel. However, the companies have to adapt their business strategies to cope with the crisis. This paper conducts a strategic assessment of the Greek agricultural cooperatives during the first half of 2013 using in-depth interviews with cooperative executives in order to illustrate how they have responded to the crisis and also to investigate their strategic options for the upcoming period. The results of the analysis show that agricultural cooperatives have chosen the retrenchment and cost-cutting strategies by restraining their activities while they appear eager to export their production. In addition, the cash shortage forced them to count exclusively on their members to finance any new economic activity. According to the cooperatives' executives, their adaption strategies exclude abandoning the activities and selling the equipment and their real estate properties, while they involve exports, the experienced personnel and marketing investments. These results could provide helpful directions not only for the agricultural cooperatives' management boards but also for the food industry businesses operating under a severe economic situation such as the present Greek economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Agriculture is highly dependent on climate change, and Cyprus especially is experiencing its impacts on agricultural production to a greater extent, mainly due to its geographical location. The adaptation of farming to the effects of global climate change may lead to the maximization of agricultural production, which is an important and desirable improvement. The main aim of this paper is to rank and quantify the impacts of climate change on the agricultural sector of Cyprus, through a multi-round Delphi survey seeking a consensus agreement in a group of experts. A multidisciplinary group of 20 experts stated their willingness-to-pay for various impacts of climate change. By applying this method, the individual impacts of climate change on crop production and water resources were brought into the modeling effort on equal footing with cost values. The final cost impact estimate represents the total estimated cost of climate change in the agricultural sector. According to the results, this cost reaches EUR 25.08 million annually for the agricultural sector, and EUR 366.48 million for the whole country. Therefore, it is expected that in the seven-year programming period 2014–2020 the total cost of climate change on agriculture ranges from EUR 176 to EUR 2565 million. The most significant impacts are due to the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere and the burden of biodiversity and ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper set out to explore the precision agriculture (PA)-training needs of students studying in agricultural universities in the Euro-Mediterranean region (Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain). SPARKLE is a Knowledge Alliance Project, funded by the European Union (EU), and one of its main goals is to narrow the innovation divide between entrepreneurship and the effective application of sustainable PA. During the project, the research conducted in all countries in the Euro-Mediterranean region revealed differences in the PA-training needs of university students. Additionally, this paper set out to explore the socioeconomic characteristics of students that affect their interest and knowledge towards PA. Finally, this paper aimed to understand the scope, present status and strategies for improving PA training in agricultural universities in the Euro-Mediterranean region. The following descriptive statistics and two multivariate analysis techniques were used: Two-Step Cluster Analysis (TSCA) and Categorical Regression (CATREG). Results support the notion that the lack of "PA knowledge/interest" adds to the technological gap amongst university students, slow adoption of PA and lower levels of overall rural economic development. These findings will be used as the fundamental cognition for the development of a joint action plan and several other national plans in the selected regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]