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Accurate commodity price forecasts are crucial for stakeholders in agricultural supply chains. They support informed marketing decisions, risk management, and investment strategies. Machine learning methods have significant potential to provide accurate forecasts by maximizing out-of-sample accuracy. However, their inherent complexity makes it challenging to understand the appropriate data pre-processing steps to ensure proper functionality. This study compares the forecasting performance of Long Short-Term Memory Recurrent Neural Networks (LSTM-RNNs) with classical econometric time series models for corn futures prices. The study considers various combinations of data pre-processing techniques, variable clusters, and forecast horizons. Our results indicate that LSTM-RNNs consistently outperform classical methods, particularly for longer forecast horizons. In particular, our findings demonstrate that LSTM-RNNs are capable of automatically handling structural breaks, resulting in more accurate forecasts when trained on datasets that include such shocks. However, in our setting, LSTM-RNNs struggle to deal with seasonality and trend components, necessitating specific data pre-processing procedures for their removal.

This study evaluates the extent to which farmers respond heterogeneously to the agri-environmental policies implemented in the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Our identification and estimation strategy combines a theory-driven research design formalizing all possible sources of heterogeneity with a Bayesian additive regression trees algorithm. Results from a 2015–2018 panel of Italian farms show that the responsiveness to these policies may differ substantially across farms and farm groups. This suggests room for improvement in implementing these policies. We also argue that the specific features of the CAP call for a careful implementation of these empirical techniques.

The impact of the European Union common agricultural policy direct payments on land prices has received substantial attention in recent years, leading to heterogeneous evidence of capitalisation for both coupled and decoupled payments. In this paper, we provide an extensive review of the empirical works addressing this issue econometrically and compare their results through a Bayesian meta-regression model, focussing on the impact of decoupling and its implementation schemes. We find that the introduction of decoupled payments increased the capitalisation rate, although the extent of this increment hinges on the implementation scheme adopted by the member state.

Policies in the agricultural and rural sectors are of key importance in shaping their sustainable development. These policies are changing from market-based policies to policies that aim to influence farmers’ decision-making. Thus, the scientific literature supporting evidence-based policy-making must develop models that simulate individual decision-making (IDM) by farmers. This study aims to understand key policy objectives, related policy questions and benchmark scenarios relevant to the European agricultural sector to define the research agenda for a suite of IDM models. This research goal has been addressed following a five-step process that involved different research tools and heterogeneous actors, including key stakeholders. Results suggest that environmental policy objectives are the most relevant for European agriculture in the coming decades. Thus, the scenario modelling exercise should focus mainly on the agri-environmental policies’ impacts while properly considering the potential trade-offs between economic and environmental objectives.

Purpose: Environmentally-friendly certifications have increased over the past decade within food supply chains. Although a large body of literature has explored the drivers leading firms to adopt such certifications, it has not closely examined the strategic motivations associated with their adoption. This paper aims to investigate an environmentally-friendly certification, VIVA, examining its role as an alternative form of supply chain governance. The aim is to investigate the drivers affecting the adoption of VIVA and to assess managerial perceptions related to transaction-related characteristics and the firm’s internal resources and capabilities. Design/methodology/approach: This study draws upon both an extended transaction cost economics perspective, which is based on transaction risks and the resource-based view, which examines a firm’s internal resources. A survey was conducted via a structured questionnaire sent to all of the wine producers in charge of the decision regarding whether to adopt VIVA certification. A Hierarchal Bayesian Model was applied to analyse questionnaire responses. Such a model allows us to specify the probabilistic relationship between questions and latent constructs and to carry over uncertainty across modelling levels. Findings: The adoption of this environmentally-friendly certification is envisioned as a tool to curb internal risks, and thus to manage behavioural uncertainty within the supply chain. A high level of exposure to exogenous transaction risks discourages firms from adopting VIVA certification. The certification system is not perceived as a promoter of operational capabilities. Managers are more likely to implement the certification when they expect that its adoption will leverage their potential knowledge of the supply chain or prompt new and better collaborations with the suppliers. Therefore, the certification can become a resource that interacts with the capabilities of the firm, expressing complementarities that sti

La distribuzione alimentare al dettaglio in Emilia-Romagna

With the progressive internationalisation of food and feed supply chains, Identity Preservation (IP) has become an important feature for traded agricultural products to ensure that the right product reaches the right customer. In this article, we focus on IP based on voluntary technical schemes for non-Genetically Modified (non-GM) crops. Three critical steps are identified along the supply chain: product management at the origination/destination port, product transportation and product processing in dedicated plants. Best management practices and coordination mechanisms are implemented by actors along the supply chain to ensure that the product maintains its IP. This translates into a higher degree of dependency among actors. Although ‘formal’ vertical integration through mergers and/or acquisition is rare, voluntary schemes require very tight coordination which is enforced through downstream-driven technical requirements and process certification standards. Market uncertainty is also observed, as the future availability of non-GM crops could become scarce, raising input prices for downstream firms. Food processors and retailers that invested in the non-GM attribute as part of their brand equity are those at higher risk. For these players it is crucial to assure product availability in the long run and to make sure consumers are willing to pay the extra costs of IP goods.

Partendo dai dati su consegne e vendite dirette di latte relativi ad ogni singolo produttore vengono esaminati i cambiamenti in atto nella struttura e nella localizzazione della produzione di latte in Italia. Nell'ultimo paragrafo, infine, si forniscono alcuni dettagli su età e genere degli imprenditori agricoli che gestiscono le imprese agricole che commercializzano latte vaccino.

This paper assesses the food supply chain for non-GM soybean meal, with particular regard to the upstream stages between overseas producers, international trading companies and their supply to Italian feed producers. Using Transaction Cost Economics as a methodological framework and the information collected from a set of interviews with industry representatives, we describe the organizational arrangements that agents adopt to minimize transaction costs. Consistently with theory, we examine the impact of uncertainty on the coordination arrangements. We focus on two dimensions of uncertainty, namely: product-quality uncertainty and environmental uncertainty. We argue that the actual organizational arrangements between transactors are consistent with the theory: whereas product-quality uncertainty and some degree of asset specificity would lead to vertically integrated forms of governance, environmental uncertainty operate in the opposite direction.

In this paper, the structure of the market (the players involved, the strategic groups of firms) and its governance (the ways stakeholders interact horizontally and vertically within the supply chain, the contractual relationships, the organizational procedures, the standards) will be studied for the EU and international supply chains relevant to the EU trade. The focus will be on maize and soybeans.

In this paper, the structure of the market (the players involved, the strategic groups of firms) and its governance (the ways stakeholders interact horizontally and vertically within the supply chain, the contractual relationships, the organizational procedures, the standards) will be studied for the EU and international supply chains relevant to the EU trade. The focus will be on maize and soybeans.

This article employs a nation-wide sample of supermarket scanner data to study product and brand competition in the Italian breakfast cereal market. A modified Almost Ideal Demand System (AIDS), that includes Distance Metrics (DMs) as proposed by Pinkse, Slade and Brett (2002), is estimated to study demand responses, substitution patterns, own-price and cross-price elasticities. Estimation results provide evidence of some degree of brand loyalty, while consumers do not seem loyal to the product type. Elasticity estimates point out the presence of patterns of substitution within products sharing the same brand and similar nutritional characteristics.

Differenziazione del prodotto e competizione tra marche nel mercato dei cereali da colazione analizzato mediante un modello di domanda "distance metrics"

La quota percentuale della produzione italiana di latte vaccino raccolta nel 2011/12 dai quattro maggiori “primi acquirenti” – vale a dire il CR4 – risulta pari al 13,4%; tale quota sale al 20,3% se si considerano le otto maggiori imprese: sono le stesse, collocate per giunta nel medesimo ordine, della campagna precedente. Entrambi gli indicatori, CR4 e CR8, nel 2011/12 evidenziano su base campagna una lieve flessione, ma a medio termine, vale a dire nel corso delle ultime sei campagne, risultano in forte crescita, anche per il fatto che le tre imprese di Lactalis (Galbani, Caravaggio Latte e Italatte) sono confluite in Italatte Spa, che dal 2007/08 è diventata il maggiore “primo acquirente” del Paese con una quota nel 2011/12 del 4,4%, in flessione di 0,7 punti percentuali nel corso dell’ultima campagna. Ai primi quattro posti, oltre a Italatte, si collocano nell’ordine, Granlatte, Soresina e Santangiolina, vale a dire una impresa privata multinazionale e tre cooperative, due attive in ambito locale e una a livello nazionale. Seguono, oltre a Parmalat, che fa parte del gruppo Italatte, altre tre cooperative: Consorzio Produttori Latte Milano, Assegnatari Associati Arborea e Consorzio Agri Piacenza Latte.