Bibliografia

The strategic guide on Food Quality Schemes (FQS) is a tool for practitioners, policymakers and researchers to explore the links between sustainability and FQS. It was developed by a team of researchers at the University of Parma in collaboration with several academic and non-academic partners, in the context of the 5-year EU Horizon 2020 research project “Strenght2Food”.  The guide presents the findings on an extensive research investigating the positive impacts of FQS linked to good production and consumption practices. Based on the results of 26 benchmarked value chains, involving different FQS (organic, PDO and PGI products) in 14 countries, the guide reports methods, tools and case studies to explore the sustainability performance of FQS. The research identified three main dimensions of public goods linked to FQS production: cultural and heritage preservation; socio-economic; and natural resources. Presenting best practices, recommendations and case studies related to each of these dimensions, the guide represents a unique opportunity of “learning from practice” and strengthening the positive impacts of FQS.

Within the framework of multifunctional conceptualisation, the authors have investigated the level of public goods embedded in Agri-food geographical indication products. Moving from the concept of the local Agri-food system, the generation of public goods is observed both on the value chain and on the territory. Three different dimensions of public goods are considered: Cultural heritage issues, socio-economic themes, and natural resources. To pursue this aim, the FAO-SAFA method is adopted. A single index for the three dimensions is computed in order to provide an easy and quick interpretation of the three dimensions. Preliminary empirical evidence on two case studies suggests different public goods levels embedded in geographical indications, depending on the dimensions analysed. The method proposed aims to be a simple and effective tool to support good practice for policymakers and indicate fields for intervention where indexes show that improvements could be made.

Considering the features of GIs and organic production, Deliverable 5.2 analyses the relationship between Public Goods (PGs) and Food Quality Schemes (FQS). The deliverable evaluates the impacts of the cases study described in Deliverable 5.1 in terms of their contribution to rural development and territorial cohesion given by the capacity to generate positive externalities and hence PGs. The analysis focuses on: contribution to local economies, generation of environmental, social, cultural externalities; contribution of different governance mechanisms to ensure the valorisation of producers’ know-how and local resources; social cohesion in terms of creation of social capital and social networks.

The protection of Geographical Indications (GIs) is being explored more and more worldwide as a tool for supporting local sustainable development. Focusing on wine and coffee value chains, this paper will set out in what way GI protection schemes can contribute to the provision of public goods, and illustrate how this contribution is being threatened by different failures that may occur within both valorization strategies and legal protection policies. By examining how private, collective, and public interventions front these failures, this paper will put forward economic arguments supporting a more comprehensive policy approach, to ensure GIs’ contribution to sustainable development.

In recent times, the concept of “local food” has come to attention in academic and political discourse about food, usually closely linked to the growing debate on Alternative Agro-Food Networks. However, the meaning of “local food” is not yet consolidated and two main meanings can be identified. The first refers to the relationship between consumer and producer: local food is food produced by firms located in places close to the final consumer. The second meaning is focused on the product and the resources used in its production process. Both these (non-opposing) meanings often share “alternativeness” in the vision of food production and consumption, contrasting the dominant model of the globalised mass food chains. Both definitions use insights from new theoretical approaches to resources and space to emphasize the role of actors and the relevance of organizational proximity and local institutions in enabling the deployment of opportunities offered by local specific resources to local competitiveness. This paper explores the relationship between local food quality and local resources, starting from a discussion about the concept of local resources in economics, and exploring the different meanings of local food quality in the current debate about food.

Localised agrifood systems are a type of organisation of agrifood activities, in which territorial dynamics play a decisive role in terms of the coordination between stakeholders and the development of production activities. The aim of this paper is to analyse: the construction and evolution of the SYAL concept, the integrated character of the SYAL concept and its conceptual basis, how activities are linked with territories and the factors involved in territorial anchorage, the diversity of situations and how the SYAL concept operates.