Many studies suggest that farmers frequently show risk averse attitudes, and choose the “riskminimizing” and “safety first” survival strategy rather than pursuing the profit maximization. This article reports on a study of the impact of risk caused by different events: climate, stock...

Agriculture produce commodities and but also influence the environment. However, even if the value of commodities is easy to determine, it is difficult to assess the efficiency of agricultural production at site level. Furthermore, the valuation of environmental impact is complex. Non-parametric...

This paper presents a model for sustainable planning and optimization of agricultural production. The model is a mathematical programming model, based on multicriteria techniques, and is used as a tool for the analysis and simulation of agricultural production plans, as well as for the study of...

The new technologies in the field of food processing provide the opportunity to revive some productions that are crushed by the global market and environmental issues. However in the citrus sector the lack of investment and difficulties to manage economic cost are likely to slow down the...

In spite of several cases study existing that assess the profitability of farms participating in direct sales activities (Brown, 2002; Brown and Miller (2008), no analysis has verified whether the notion that farmers participating in short supply chains are profitable holds to the empirical test....

Nowadays innovation represents a strategy to face the economic crisis affecting many sectors globally. It is believed that innovation is one of the most significant factors for the enhancement of competitiveness. Innovation is identified with the creation of value by companies, and networking is...

In comparison to flatland agriculture mountainous agriculture is often shaped by small plot sizes, unfavourable climatic conditions and steep slopes. All those conditions make it extraordinarily expensive to implement new technologies and to modernise farms. Consequently our research hypothesis...

The purpose of this article is to assess whether food safety regulations imposed by the European Union in the 2000s may have induced a slow-down in the productivity of firms in the food processing sector. The impact of regulations on costs and productivity has seldom been studied. This article...