Agriculture both contributes to sustainability along its main three pillars, balancing economic, environmental, and social performances, and is affected by their dynamics. A vision for sustainable agriculture based on five criteria and on several actions has been proposed for transforming world food and agriculture sectors in order to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and embrace the 2030 Agenda’s vision of sustainable development (FAO, 2016, 2018).
Regarding the environmental sphere, climate change issues in agriculture are of importance and, since the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within UNEP in 1998, have gained new momentum in recent international events and initiatives. The agricultural sector both needs to reduce its impacts and adapt its food production system to cope with environmental constraints and climate changes. Furthermore, from the Paris Agreement of 2015, the COP24 Conference of the Parties held in December 2018 marked the start of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture. Climate change-induced increases in temperatures, rainfall variation, and the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are adding to pressures on global and local agricultural and food systems. Climate change is expected to affect negatively both crop and livestock production systems in most regions, although with different patterns (OECD / IFPRI 2014). Faced with growing global demand, market and warming phenomena, and with competition for resources, agricultural policies—the next CAP is one of the most obvious policy spheres—are called to help to mitigate the effect of climate and to adapt to climate changes with measures at the farm and sectorial levels aimed at reducing their vulnerabilities (EEA 2015). Within the above context, a growing body of literature has started to address the topic of relationships between agriculture, sustainability, and climate changes, both coping with risks related to different climate scenarios and regions, and with measures fostering the adoption of innovations induced by and oriented towards sustainability.
Another field of research is the investigation of new modes of supply chain sustainability governance and new models of multi-stakeholder collaboration to achieve food security, environmental sustainability, and economic development (WEF 2016). Among the three factors that Gardner et al. (2018) consider as having a pivotal role in determining whether commodity production and trade can be placed on a more sustainable pathway, the issue of scale and that of responsibility are particularly relevant in the present context. The issue of scale refers to the global versus local debate and underlines the disconnection between the territories involved as drivers and impacts, between places of production and of consumption. The second issue points to the topic of responsibility and to the need for actors involved in every step of global-local supply chains to share the responsibility of placing production systems on a more sustainable footing. The increasing array of multi-stakeholder processes, roundtables, and hybrid governance arrangements and the wider set of state and non-state actors urge the need for transparency and information, and new governance models along the food chains.
Environmental and economic perspectives are even more closely linked with socio-cultural and ethical issues, such as the issue of hunger, and with the challenge of providing a growing global population with healthy diets from sustainable food systems (Willett et al. 2019). In this regard, the literature has increasingly paid attention to the pro-environmental attitude and behavior towards more sustainable food consumption and diet styles (FAO 2010). Sustainable claims, environmental values, consumer sensitivity, and marketing strategies are among the most used key words in the field. The wine industry is one of the most studied sectors within the literature addressing the issues of sustainability in the agriculture sphere, considering both the supply side and the demand side. In the search for new business models and marketing tools to address the increasing competition on the world and local levels, there have been many studies, projects, and initiatives promoting sustainability-oriented practices and approaches in the wine sector. On the institutional level, in 2011 the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea launched the project VIVA - Sustainable wine, Sustainability and Culture to improve the sustainability performances of the wine chain by means of a new methodological approach and a program in which several Italian wine-growing firms participated. The Millennial generation, maybe because of the intrinsic nature of inter-generationality within the sustainability concept, or because of their degree of sensitivity towards sustainable issues, are increasingly studied for their relevance in forecasting future scenarios and in comparing food and beverage habits among generations.
This special issue includes three selected papers presented at the 53rd annual Conference of the Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), held in San Michele all’Adige/Bolzano on 22–24 September 2016. The theme of the Conference was, “The future of agriculture between globalization and local markets.” The choice of this theme aimed to stimulate a scientific debate on the future of an agriculture that is marked by the dualism of opening global markets and the growing demand for local products linked to the territory and traditions. Indeed, the Conference intended to discuss how the dichotomy of liberalism versus localism involves multiple challenges for the agriculture and the food sector.
