Drivers of Productivity Change in the Italian Tomato Food Value Chain

Čechura, Lukáš; Kroupová, Zdeňka Žáková; Samoggia, Antonella

doi:10.3390/agriculture11100996

Cited by 9 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The findings of this empirical research paper are supported by the body of literature dedicated to the topic of agri-food value chain management with a particular focus on the strategic actions for value creation along the chain links, hence contributing to building sustainable economic competitiveness [3,34,[76][77][78][79][80]82,[143][144][145][146][147][148][149]. To provide more literature evidence that supports the main highlights of this empirical paper, findings are convergent towards the following:…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 68%

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

Constantin

Sapena

Apetrei

et al. 2023

Foods

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Competitiveness has always been a multifaceted illusive concept, which has made it a real challenge for scholars and practitioners to find the most suitable measurement tools to completely encapsulate all the complex nuances of competitiveness. This becomes even more of a challenge when approached in relation to particular economic sectors. The agri-food sector is no exception, especially when considering all its interconnections with the other sectors: water, energy, transport, waste. All of them impact the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Similarly, scholars have been debating the meaning of sustainability for decades, some even arguing that it is a political, subjective, and, in some cases, self-contradictory concept. As far as the sustainability of agricultural competitiveness is concerned, the literature is still developing. It is much more focused on fostering environmental competitiveness, and less attention was paid to the strategies designed to capitalize on sustainable economic competitiveness—a concept that has attracted divergent opinions in the literature, mainly due to ambiguity. Thus, instead of falling into the pitfall of vagueness, this paper was aimed at bringing its contribution to this field by undertaking the research objective of exploring a single facet of sustainable agricultural competitiveness: the economic facet. Hence, this paper proposes the construction of the sustainable economic competitiveness index (SECI) with direct application for agri-food value chains. It consists of three attributes: (a) factor endowments, resource independence; (b) agricultural chain performance; and (c) national agricultural chain strategies and policies. In this study, SECI was tested against the cereal chain for a selection of EU countries, based on the data taken over from FAOSTAT and INTRACEN Trade Map, in the case of the 2011–2020 period. Various statistical and econometric methods were used to test the robustness of SECI. Results stand as proof that building sustainable agricultural economic competitiveness relies on a mix of strategic actions. The key vector in this mix is that trade flow patterns and policies must be calibrated in accordance with national factor endowments in order to achieve high levels of SECI. To add more managerial implications, this paper argues for the smart delivery of agri-food products with high added value instead of focusing on exporting big volumes of raw agricultural materials with little added value.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 68%

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

Constantin

Sapena

Apetrei

et al. 2023

Foods

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“…In order to increase their margins, tomato processors could aim to reduce production costs by increasing plant efficiency, as previously reported by Čechura, Žáková Kroupová, and Samoggia [11], or attempt to differentiate their products in order to achieve higher market prices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Hedonic Analysis of Processed Tomato Prices Using Italian Regional Markets Data

Meo

Nardone

Bimbo

et al. 2022

Foods

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The Italian market of processed tomatoes (whole peeled and unpeeled tomatoes, chopped tomato pulp, tomato purée, and concentrated tomato paste) rose, thanks to the Italian tradition of using such products in many recipes of cuisine, until early 2000; since then, it has declined to date. Moreover, such products are traditionally considered low-price products, and their market is characterized by intense price competition. Thus, recently, producers have started to differentiate their products as a way to achieve higher margins, and escape from competition in price. By using the sales data of Italian processed tomatoes sold in several retail stores and a hedonic price model, we estimated the implicit prices associated with several attributes that are currently available in processed tomato products on the market. We find that a protected designation of origin, organic certification, and flavoring, as well as the indication of tomato variety, are the most valuable features of processed tomato products sold in the Italian market. This implies that product differentiation strategies that could be suggested to producers as the most effective are those aimed at enhancing the territorial link of the product, the environmental sustainability of the production process, and organoleptic product features, as well as its convenience.

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“…Indeed, the reverse auction of retailers has been identified as a potential UTP [8,63]. The small tomato producers have taken advantage to improve scale efficiency by increasing the scale of operations, resulting in growth of total factor productivity at the producer level [76].…”

Section: Figurementioning

confidence: 99%

Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

et al. 2022

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System dynamics and agent-based simulation modelling approaches have a potential as tools to evaluate the impact of policy related decision making in food value chains. The context is that a food value chain involves flows of multiple products, financial flows and decision making among the food value chain players. Each decision may be viewed from the level of independent actors, each with their own motivations and agenda, but responding to externalities and to the behaviours of other actors. The focus is to show how simulation modelling can be applied to problems such as fairness and power asymmetries in European food value chains by evaluating the outcome of interventions in terms of relevant operational indicators of interorganisational fairness (e.g., profit distribution, market power, bargaining power). The main concepts of system dynamics and agent-based modelling are introduced and the applicability of a hybrid of these methods to food value chains is justified. This approach is outlined as a research agenda, and it is demonstrated how cognitive maps can help in the initial conceptual model building when implemented for specific food value chains studied in the EU Horizon 2020 VALUMICS project. The French wheat to bread chain has many characteristics of food value chains in general and is applied as an example to formulate a model that can be extended to capture the functioning of European FVCs. This work is to be further progressed in a subsequent stream of research for the other food value chain case studies with different governance modes and market organisation, in particular, farmed salmon to fillet, dairy cows to milk and raw tomato to processed tomato.

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Drivers of Productivity Change in the Italian Tomato Food Value Chain

Cited by 9 publications

References 45 publications

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

Deliver Smart, Not More! Building Economically Sustainable Competitiveness on the Ground of High Agri-Food Trade Specialization in the EU

A Hedonic Analysis of Processed Tomato Prices Using Italian Regional Markets Data

Conceptual System Dynamics and Agent-Based Modelling Simulation of Interorganisational Fairness in Food Value Chains: Research Agenda and Case Studies

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