Agrofood Research Hub
INNOVAZIONE E SOSTENIBILITA' ECONOMICA
La piattaforma è dedicata alle attività di ricerca nel campo dell’economia applicata agli ambiti agro-alimentare ed ambientale.
Le principali tematiche di ricerca riguardano le strategie per la sostenibilità economica dei sistemi agro-alimentari: innovazione, modelli di impresa, preferenze del consumatore, gestione delle risorse ambientali.
AMBITI DI ATTIVITA’
Innovazione per la sostenibilità: Analisi degli elementi e dei processi che caratterizzano l’innovazione tecnologica nei sistemi agroalimentari; individuazione e valutazione dei driver dell’innovazione in specifici settori e filiere del sistema agroindustriale e dei processi economici legati alla sostenibilità delle filiere alimentari.
Economia comportamentale e scelte del consumatore: Analisi delle preferenze e delle scelte del consumatore in ambito alimentare; valutazione dei modelli di consumo e dei fattori che ne influenzano l’evoluzione nella società contemporanea.
Marketing e valorizzazione di prodotto: Analisi dei mercati agro-alimentari, delle dinamiche di produzione e di prezzo; valutazione di strategie di marketing per la promozione e la valorizzazione dei prodotti agroalimentari.
Economia circolare e analisi di impatti: Analisi di scenario e di impatto economico relativi all’adozione di soluzioni innovative di economia circolare, analisi di performance.
Politiche agro-alimentari ed ambientali: Analisi delle problematiche economiche e degli impatti associati ai principali strumenti di politica agricola e ambientale a livello comunitario, nazionale e locale.
STRUMENTI
Le principali metodologie utilizzate per l’analisi dei casi studio sono:
l’analisi strutturata di fonti primarie e secondarie (database e siti di settore),
la realizzazione di focus group e surveys,
l’analisi brevettuale,
modelli di analisi di impatto,
metodologie multidimensionali per la valutazione della sostenibilità globale delle filiere agroalimentari indagini dirette rivolte agli operatori del settore.
PROGETTI E COLLABORAZIONI
Progetto SVOLTA “Nuove strategie per la valorizzazione del comparto olivicolo del Garda. La filiera dell’oliva da tavola: sfide e opportunità” Bando FEASR-PSR Regione Lombardia.
Progetto SLURP “Sludge (And Other Residues) Recovery In Agriculture: Environment And Health Protection”, Fondazione Cariplo.
Progetto BBPlug “Circular agri-food systems: development of biodegradable and biostimulant plant multiplication plugs from fruit and vegetable wastes, Fondazione Cariplo.
Progetto MedBerry “- Developing new strategies to protect strawberry crop in Mediterranean countries”, PRIMA Foundation.
Progetto RICREA, “Rifiuti cerealicoli per il biorisanamento”. Ministero per la Transizione Ecologica, Bando per il cofinanziamento di progetti di ricerca volti allo sviluppo di tecnologie per la prevenzione, il recupero, il riciclaggio ed il trattamento di rifiuti non rientranti nelle categorie già servite da consorzi di filiera, all’ecodesign dei prodotti ed alla corretta gestione dei relativi rifiuti.
Collaborazioni
Università degli Studi di Milano
Università Politecnica delle Marche
Alma Mater Studiorum di Bologna
Università Cattolica S. Cuore Piacenza
Universidad de Córdoba
University of Cukurova
Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II
Institut national de la recherche agronomique (INRA)
Direzione Generale Agricoltura, Alimentazione e Sistemi Verdi – Regione Lombardia
Associazione Interprovinciale Produttori Olivicoli Lombardi
Comunità Montana Alto Garda Bresciano
Assofertilizzanti – Federchimica
Promocoop Lombardia
Coldiretti
BioC-CheM Solutions srl
Sistemi Ambientali srl
Terre & Sapori Soc. Agr. Coop.
Viveros California (Spain)
PUBBLICAZIONI
V Caprarulo, V Ventura, A Amatucci, G Ferronato… - Animals, 2022 - mdpi.com
Simple Summary The mitigation of the environmental impact of animal production is a global objective, and innovation can provide new strategies and technologies to support the transition toward a more sustainable livestock system. Using patent data analysis to identify innovation dynamics, we explored the sector of feed additives to reduce methane emissions in ruminants. We found that this innovation sector is recent and rapidly expanding, with the European Union representing the center of innovation. The most promising inventions are …
DG Frisio, V Ventura - Plants, 2021 - mdpi.com
The use of plants as biofactories for the production of medical products and vaccines has a long history, but the recent COVID-19 pandemic has caused this set of technologies, for their potential to contribute to the development of innovative solutions for tackling pandemic spread worldwide, to rise in prominence. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the global innovation scenario of plant-based vaccine production. Methods: Patent search using a specific set of technical classification codes and keywords was performed using the Questel …
V Ventura, A Cavaliere, B Iannò - Trends in Food Science & Technology, 2021 - Elsevier
Background Academic interest in the use of social media data is rapidly increasing. The application of social media analysis in various domains is an emerging trend due to a massive volume of available data, accessibility, and interaction. Food is often a protagonist of the posting activity on social networks; however, the analysis of social media use in relation to food is still limited. Scope and approach The dual purpose of this systematic review was, firstly, to provide an overview of the existing literature about the phenomenon of …
S Arpaia, O Christiaens, A Dietz-Pfeilstetter… - Journal of Pest …, 2020 - Springer
RNA interference (RNAi) is being developed and exploited to improve plants by modifying endogenous gene expression as well as to target pest and pathogen genes both within plants (ie host-induced gene silencing) and/or as topical applications (eg spray-induced gene silencing). RNAi is a natural mechanism which can be exploited to make a major contribution towards integrated pest management and sustainable agricultural strategies needed worldwide to secure current and future food production. RNAi plants are being …
M Castrica, V Ventura, S Panseri, G Ferrazzi… - Sustainability, 2020 - mdpi.com
Background: Urban food production in the developed world has recently been facing the challenge of feeding the world's cities adequately and on a sustainable basis, and innovative models of food production can help this transition. Nevertheless, this field of research largely focuses on primary food production—so-called urban farming—while the subsequent steps of the food chain have scarcely been investigated. In this context, this study aimed to provide a preliminary evaluation of urban food processing, taking mozzarella …
CNT Taning, S Arpaia, O Christiaens… - Pest management …, 2020 - Wiley Online Library
Facing current climate challenges and drastically reduced chemical options for plant protection, the exploitation of RNA interference (RNAi) as an agricultural biotechnology tool has unveiled possible new solutions to the global problems of agricultural losses caused by pests and other biotic and abiotic stresses. While the use of RNAi as a tool in agriculture is still limited to a few transgenic crops, and only adopted in restricted parts of the world, scientists and industry are already seeking innovations in leveraging and exploiting the …
CM Balzaretti, V Ventura, S Ratti, G Ferrazzi… - Eating and Weight …, 2020 - Springer
Purpose This work analyses the meal supply in primary schools in Italy to highlight new areas of inefficiency upstream of the food chain, regarding the size of the food portions specified in public tenders. A lack of conformity of food portions can potentially lead to a double negative externality affecting the sustainability of school meals: overweight children and food waste. Method Based on the data contained in the contract between municipalities and school catering services, the analysis was performed on the portion sizes (in grams) of …
CM Balzaretti, V Ventura, S Ratti, G Ferrazzi… - Eating and Weight …, 2020 - Springer
Purpose This work analyses the meal supply in primary schools in Italy to highlight new areas of inefficiency upstream of the food chain, regarding the size of the food portions specified in public tenders. A lack of conformity of food portions can potentially lead to a double negative externality affecting the sustainability of school meals: overweight children and food waste. Method Based on the data contained in the contract between municipalities and school catering services, the analysis was performed on the portion sizes (in grams) of …
G Ferrazzi, V Ventura… - … Journal on Food …, 2019 - centmapress.ilb.uni-bonn.de
The identification of new strategies to prevent or at least reduce the volume of food waste needs to consider a wide range of solutions and priorities that EU policy is recently implementing. Based on the principles of the circular economy, one of the most promising solutions is to prevent food losses turning into waste by working synergistically on different action points. Amongst them, the strategy of repurposing food waste through conversion in a safe and sustainable feed product is acquiring huge interest amongst scientists and policy …
D Frisio, V Ventura - 54th SIDEA Conference–25th SIEA Conference, 2018 - air.unimi.it
Plant biotechnologies are considered one of the most promising innovation sector in agriculture and during the last decade the development of a new wave of breeding techniques (NBTs) have rapidly emerged, thus changing the scenario of crop improvement. In this article, the structure of patent landscape of NBT agricultural applications have been examined to assess the impacts of this technology, the concentration of the R& D- related activity and the technological competitiveness of the public sector's contribution, with …
M Castrica, DEA Tedesco, S Panseri, G Ferrazzi… - Sustainability, 2018 - mdpi.com
Food loss and waste have a negative environmental impact due to the water, land, energy and other natural resources used to produce the wasted food, along with post-consumption disposal costs. Reducing food waste will thus help improve sustainability and decrease the environmental impact of the food system. Using food waste for animal feed is of growingm importance in terms of the policies targeted at tackling food waste but the current legalframework in the European Union (EU) strongly restricts the possibility of using food waste …
D Bertoni, D Cavicchioli, F Donzelli, G Ferrazzi… - Agriculture, 2018 - mdpi.com
Sustainable development is more often considered by media, public opinion, and politicians to be the main goal our society should attempt to pursue in the coming years. To this aim, academic researchers have made sustainability one of the main objects of their studies. This work focuses on environmental sustainability and presents a brief overview of how it is taken into consideration in the agricultural economics field by considering this topic from different perspectives and thus highlighting how this field is gradually broadening its scope to include …
A Cavaliere, V Ventura - Journal of Cleaner Production, 2018 - Elsevier
The academic interest towards food products produced with innovative technologies has increased and a specific attention has been paid on the factors that could explain consumer acceptance or skepticism with regard to these new technologies. In this frame, the aim of this work is to analyze the factors that affect consumer acceptance towards new technologies in food with a special focus on Shelf Life Extension, which is considered to be one of the most sustainability-driving food innovations. The target group for the analysis is represented by …
G Ferrazzi, V Ventura, S Ratti… - Italian journal of food …, 2017 - ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Italy, with a cultivated area of 218,000 ha, is a European leader of rice production. In particular Lombardy region accounts for 40% of total rice cultivation and the case study in object accounts for 3.2% of Lombardy total rice area (2773 ha). Starting from 2012, through a regional project titled Buono, Sano e Vicino (good, healthy and close), Riso e Rane rural district supported local rice farmers in developing innovation in rice production and promoting an alternative supply chain to increase farmers bargaining power and promote …
V Ventura, DG Frisio, G Ferrazzi… - Public Understanding …, 2017 - journals.sagepub.com
Several studies provide evidence of the role of written communication in influencing public perception towards genetically modified organisms, whereas visual communication has been sparsely investigated. This article aims to evaluate the exposure of the Italian population to scary genetically modified organism–related images. A set of 517 images collected through Google are classified considering fearful attributes, and an index that accounts for the scary impact of these images is built. Then, through an ordinary least …
G Ferrazzi, S Bormolini, G Agnelli… - VI Balkan Symposium on …, 2014 - actahort.org
More and more attention is paid to environmental, economic and social sustainability of theagricultural activity as it is proved at European level by the new setting of CAP toward 2020. It is therefore interesting to understand which production practices better react to these characteristics. Biodynamic appears to respond well in terms of environmental sustainability: can the same be affirmed in terms of economic sustainability? In this paper Italian biodynamic sector has been analyzed focusing on horticultural production: its economic …