Alena MYSHKO, Ca' Foscari university, Italy
Vladi FINOTTO, Ca' Foscari university, Italy
Cinzia COLAPINTO, Ca' Foscari university, Italy
Francesca CHECCHINATO , Ca' Foscari university, Italy
Christine MAURACHER , Ca' Foscari university, Italy
The agricultural and agri-food sector has been facing serious pressure from global sustainability challenges. The sector is expected to increase food quality and quantity and thus resolve problems of food insecurity. In parallel, it is expected to decrease emissions and the environmental impact of its operations. The growing environmental, social and economic risks, as well as institutional conditions, have highlighted the need for integration of the environment and development, that which is conceptualised as ‘sustainable development’. In turn, sustainable agriculture is an integrated and essential part of sustainable development as a whole. One of the ways to transform agricultural sector and increase its sustainability, along with embracing profit-making and improvement of labour conditions, is wider implementation of smart and digital technologies. This transformative and sustainable type of agriculture can generally be conceptualised as ‘climate smart agriculture’ (CSA), which rests on its three main pillars, such as agronomic and economic productivity, resilience and adaptive capacity, and climate change mitigation.
Our research, based on the systemic literature review, unpacked the transformation of agricultural and agri-food supply chains broad by the vast utilisation of CSA, as well as the central topics in the recent agri-food and agri-business discourse. It highlights the importance of examining the factors and conditions behind the choice and application of particular innovations and digital strategies. The identification of issues and aims for each case in agri-business is supposed to assist the choice and implementation of innovation, the node of supply chain and actors involved. The research highlights the disproportions in CSA applications according to geographical areas, as well as at the nodes of the supply with its concentration on the farming. This imbalance affects both the sector’s development and its representation in research.
Mots clés : agri-food supply chain|climate-smart agriculture|smart technologies|smart farming|sustainable agriculture
A103952AM