The rural development plans in Europe, within the provisions of Axis Two of the Common Agricultural Policy, consider the opportunity to protect and enhance “environmental-friendly” farming systems. The present paper describes the role of organic farming measures in the promotion and...

The use and valorisation of landscape services provided in agricultural landscapes are assumed to create socio-economic benefits, which in turn can enhance the competitiveness of rural regions. However, the causal relationships between the valorisation of landscape and the socio-economic...

The 2014 U.S. Farm Act passed into law in early February, 2014, after approximately three years of hearings. Much debate in the negotiations leading to this Farm Act focused on new programs for providing producers with support payments covering “shallow losses” in revenue. We develop an...

Paraphrasing the 1996 World Food Summit definition, “food insecurity” exists when “not” all people, “not” at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food. In this perspective, our study examines the relation between spatial inequality and...

The main goal of this paper is to develop a methodology to quantitatively assess resilience to food insecurity. The developed methodology is applied to Nicaraguan rural households hit by Mitch Hurricane in 1999. The results show that the proposed resilience index is a good predictor of...

Sustainable management of natural resources and climate action together form one of the three objectives of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2014–2020. They are addressed by replacing the existing direct payments under Pillar 1 with a basic payment topped up by an additional payment...

This paper aims at evaluating the impact of the 2003/2005 CAP reform on farm production choices. The outcome of “market orientation” is measured by considering both the short-term production choices and the long-term investment decisions. The Treatment Effect (TE) is estimated through recent...

This paper investigates production costs of soft wheat by applying the FACEPA cost of production model to the Italian data (RICA) for 2005-2009. Estimates are obtained by carrying out a SUR, allowing for correlated errors between the set of equations and for imposing constraints to coefficients...

During the last decade, the Niger’s population has been affected by the food crisis (2001, 2004-2005, 2008, 2010-2011). Each year, she is subjected to many structural and temporary shocks. The structural shocks are caused by the chronicle difficulties (income) while the temporary shocks are...

This paper aims at investigating what influences the distribution of the RDP funds across the EU space. Eventually, funds allocation is the consequence of some political decision. Nonetheless, this political decision can not be directly observed. While the allocation across countries and, when...