MODELS FOR DISSEMINATION AND IMPACT ASSESSMENT OF INNOVATIONS FOR ORGANIC FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS

With the implementation of the “Farm to Fork strategy”, the European Union aims to convert at least 25% of land to organic farming, which is the main alternative to the industrial/intensive production model, with many positive implications also in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The objective of this dissertation is to first analyze the main factors that can drive farmers towards sustainable agri-food systems while also investigating the role of consumers, in order to suggest useful tools to facilitate this transition. After the theoretical and context analysis, through an analysis of several factors we find that an important variable that hinders the transition to the organic system is the lack of support for farmers. In addition, we verified how the Covid 19 pandemic and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine have affected the agri-food system, increasing production costs, prices of commodity and their volatility and consequently affect the most vulnerable economic agents of agri-food supply chain, i.e. farmers and consumers. The system's transition to more sustainable production can also be driven by consumers' food choices, and so we investigate which motivations drive their consumption of low/high emission products. The final analysis on the propensity to innovate, conducted on a sample of farmers in the Marche region, underlines how organizational innovation and investments in collaboration and integration, such as supply chain contracts and advisory services, could be key elements in facilitating the transition towards a sustainable agri-food system capable of overcoming the main global challenges.