In times when a pandemic has crippled the global economy and our health, it is definitely the moment to plan our future more wisely, in order to grow in resilience and let opportunities arise organically. Talking about organic matters the European Commission, after what the Farm to Fork strategy (F2F) is promised to look like, seems very keen to promote a stronger, more resilient food production in Europe. This would mean also counting on young farmers and making [...]
On May 20, the European Commission has presented its newer flagship food policy Farm to Fork (F2F), confirming the intention of further focusing on the sustainability of European food chains. The F2F strategy is so far divided into 27 actions, organized by four macro areas: i) Sustainable Food production, ii) Sustainable Food processing and Distribution, iii) Sustainable Food Consumption, and iv) Food Loss & Waste Prevention. One can see the pattern, or rather, the “shape” of such conceptualization, [...]
If you are in one of the countries applying restrictive measures in face of the COVID-19 virus, you are likely to have seen at least one of the following when buying for your food supplies: police asking you for the self-certificate you need when going to grocery shopping, bringing shopping to relatives, just returning from the shopping; supermarkets emptied out from toilet paper and dry pasta; a certain feeling of judgment when purchasing more than 5 tins of [...]
The problem of food waste is such not only because of its staggering amount worldwide, but also because of the way we are dealing with it. In Europe, each year 88 tons of food are wasted – approximately 173 kg per person. The biggest waste comes from the Netherlands (541 kg/person) and the lowest from Slovenia (72 kg); however, the numbers are still too big and actions still too little on the matter overall. This is especially shocking [...]
In the project eTOMATO, we define the dimensions of Multifunctional Agriculture as relating to Rural Tourism, Social and Didactic Farming, and Short Food Supply Chain. These are the most prominent categories of MA but, as underlined by Renting et al. (2009), Tripathi et al. (2015) and Padmos (2019) MA also work in the dimension of Nature Preservation or Management. The graph as shown below developed by Tripathi et al. (2015) better summarizes the dimensions of MA as well [...]
Politics and elections are the hot topic of the summer for the EU. On July the 10th, the new Agriculture & Rural Development Committee chair has been elected, Norbert Lins. 45 MEPs of the European Parliament have elected the German member of the European People’s Party (EEP) Lins, who won with 36 votes compared to the 11 of his competitor Maxette Pirbaka’s. Together with the chairman, also the positions of vice chairs were decided, and assigned respectively to [...]
The University of Foggia has participated to the International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics, Matera on 5-7 June 2019. It has been an occasion to talk about entrepreneurship, knowledge alliances and obviously, eTOMATO. The efforts undertaken in order to support the development of a more competitive socio-economic environment are at stake in several sectors of our economy and society. Entrepreneurial universities apply concepts of knowledge management in order to reach the “third mission”, which has 3 dimensions: Technology [...]
In our current society, we are forced to live fast. Capacity to adapt and transform is needed to follow the quick changes of politics and technology, of our society and thus markets. But where does this speediness come from? Partially, from consumers: it is of them to express desire for things to be always new and innovative, for them to enlarge the horizons of their spheres of understanding. It is important then for the actors providing goods and [...]