No abstract

PurposeMilk is one of the most produced, consumed and protected agricultural commodities worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to assess how trade-opening policies can foster food security in the Chinese milk sector.Design/methodology/approachThe empirical evidence proposed in our paper is based on time series data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (2019) and FAOSTAT (2020). Differences in income elasticity between urban and rural areas are estimated by OLS regressions. The data also provide empirical evidence to assess to what extent and to which countries China is resorting to meet its growing demand.FindingsPer-capita milk consumption of Chinese is rising. The authors’ estimates show that milk income elasticity is higher in rural areas. China is also progressively increasing its dependence on imports. Producers who benefit the most are those from countries implementing trade-opening policies.Research limitations/implicationsOther methods could be applied, by way of example, the gravitational model.Practical implicationsTrade agreements and the removal of barriers could be effective responses to protectionist pressures and to food security concerns.Social implicationsThe case examined is of particular interest as it intervenes on food security and safety.Originality/valueThe paper adds value and evidence to the effects of trade on food security in a country with limited and exploited natural resources addressing a health emergency and environmental concerns.

Italy has adopted the strategy of inner areas, mainly based on physical distance from public services. The strategy promotes a multi-level and multi-fund governance approach and the local partnership of mayors. Our paper focuses on rural areas, identified by the national strategy of inner areas, as peripheral and ultra-peripheral, in the Italian insular region (Sicily and Sardinia). It analyzes, at the municipality level, socio-demographic, economic, and environmental sustainability using appropriate indicators. Aiming at discovering the underlying relationship portrayed by multi-attribute data in an information system, we applied rough set theory. The inductive decision rules obtained through this data mining methodology reveal the simultaneous presence or absence of important characteristics aiming at reaching different levels of sustainability. Without the requirement of statistical assumptions regarding data distribution or structures for collecting data, such as functions or equations, this method ensures the description of patterns exhibited by data. Of particular interest is the assessment of conditional attributes (i.e., the selected indicators), and the information connecting them to sustainability, as a decision attribute. The most important result is rule generation, specifically, decision rules that are able to suggest tools for policy makers at different levels.

Trade creation and diversion: effects of EU enlargement on agricultural and food products and selected Asian countries M. Bruna Zolin & Utai UprasenYour article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be self-archived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".

No abstract