No abstract

No abstract

Cities around the world face new challenges of food security, and are developing urban food policies. Their objective is to integrate hunger problems with the aims of a food system based on environmental, economic and social sustainability. In this study a comparative analysis of the urban food policies' actions is conducted, as envisaged in cities around the world. The methodology is based on the community detection method through network analysis, in which the number of actions cities have in common defines their adjacency in the network.The Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, which is a unique city platform worldwide, was used to select the cities and to analyse the actions in them, as classified into six main topics: ensuring and enabling an environment for effective action; sustainable diets and nutrition; social and economic equity; food production; food supply and distribution; and food waste. Three clusters are thus identified: i) agriculture for food security; ii) governance and food economy; and iii) sustainable and healthy consumption. This research provides a description of the main focuses of current policies, and their main political differences. The study may therefore also help improve future development.

PurposeConsumers' concerns about the environmental impacts of food production have been increasing over the last years, and several certification systems for environment-friendly food products have been created. This research investigates wine consumers' preferences for a certification that guarantees the use of agricultural practices that better protect the biodiversity in the vineyard during the production of grapes.Design/methodology/approachUsing a choice experiment, we investigate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines on a sample of 334 wine consumers. The experiment was carried out by direct interviews at a wine-tasting event in an Italian winery located in the Franciacorta area, in northern Italy. A between-subject design and two different questionnaires were used, one presenting the Brut bottle and one the Satén bottle.FindingsEstimates from a mixed logit model reveal that consumers are generally willing to pay a higher price for biodiversity-friendly wines, but they have stronger preferences for organic certification and quality indications. When consumers perceive a specific product as having high quality, i.e. Satèn, they might be less willing to pay for further environment-friendly certifications. Moreover, preferences depend on sociodemographic and attitudinal variables such as gender, wine consumption frequency, wine education and knowledge degree of the labels.Originality/valueThis paper broadens the knowledge about consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines, focusing on a specific market segment of Italian sparkling wines.

Urban gardening (UG) as a component of urban agriculture (UA) has reached popularity during the last decades. This growing interest depends on several factors including the different functions that have been attributed to UG over the years, operating from the economic to the social, health and cultural levels. While multifunctionality of UG is well documented, only a few studies investigated individual gardeners' motivations, which can be subjective and heavily affected by the local context in which it takes place. The paper aims to detect some peculiar features of Milan city gardeners, in order to highlight the motivations of their activity through an innovative and replicable approach based on multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA). The analysis has been applied to the Milan case study, in the North of Italy; the results suggest a great importance of the social component of UG, and trace some different gardeners' profiles.