The paper deals with the role of ICT and the related infrastructures to induce innovations for sustainable rural development. In particular, it focuses on the innovations induced by ICT in farms and in new rural firms, and on how digital infrastructures support and generate social innovation mechanisms, leading to the consolidation of entrepreneurship and dissemination of ICT-based innovation in rural areas. The hypothesis is that the presence of digital infrastructures generates a double effect: overcoming the concept of geographical proximity (relevant for remote rural areas) and promoting social innovation. In particular, this paper examines the role of social innovation to create a new demand for products, services and organisational models for farms and rural enterprises, promoting further innovation. To target the objectives, the work analyses three case studies of new business models (BMs) based on ICT innovation. The analysis focuses on the most important interactions, learning and organisational processes within the new enterprises and among the new farms/enterprises and the other economic and institutional actors, and on how they were shaped and changed by the use of ICT, relating them to a conceptual model. These three cases, although pioneering, are important since they give an original response to some of the main problems and needs of remote and inner rural areas, as for the access to high value segment of food market, the information deliveries about attractiveness of landscape and countryside for foreigners, investors and tourists and the creation of new stable relation with consumers/citizens in the urban areas. The three cases have been analysed with the aim to identify how the ICT, and the related innovations, create an interconnection between four characteristic elements of the BMs (value creation, supply chain, customer interfaces, financial model) and the restructuring of proximity dimensions (cognitive, institutional, social, geographical, organizational). The work shows how these three cases have several communalities, but also different aspects with respect to our objective of analysis: there are different ways in which the four characteristic elements of the BM are constructed and also different in the role that the different dimensions of proximity play in structuring the innovation process in each one of them. More generally, the results of the work also lead to consider a new role for public investments in ICT infrastructures: public administrations should intervene in order to create a coherence within projects of public and private initiatives.

This article aims to provide a review of major challenges and research needs for the diffusion of conservation agriculture (CA) and the improvement of crop–soil–water conditions in Southern Europe and Northern Africa. A multidisciplinary study and a participatory approach are at the basis of an international project of research and innovation action, “Research-based participatory approaches for adopting conservation agriculture in the Mediterranean Area-CAMA”. It aims to understand the reasons and the research needs that limit a large CA diffusion in the Mediterranean countries. CAMA aims to provide significant advances to CA through multidisciplinary research at the field and farm scales (with main emphasis on smallholder), encompassing a socio-economic analysis of the reasons that obstacle the CA diffusion, legume crop improvement as a component of improved CA cropping systems, and a network of long-term experiments on CA and soil characteristic modification. Its results will be available to scientific and farming communities.

The present study aims at investigating the potential impacts of agricultural policies on GHG emissions from agriculture across the European Union. The study begins by providing evidence on how the key CAP reforms contributed to the structural changes the European agriculture faced in the past. Based on these facts, we introduce the context of implementation of the 2014–2022 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), within which many interventions were designed to improve sustainability and increase competitiveness, and we formulate hypotheses on how CAP instruments can contribute differently to influencing GHG emissions from agriculture. The hypotheses formulated concern the following: (1) the influence of the income support payment on land prices and, consequently, on land distribution between small and large landowners; (2) the influence of the coupled payment on agricultural specialization; (3) the influence of agri-environmental-climate measures on the sustainable management of agricultural lands. These causalities can have direct and indirect effects on GHG emissions from agriculture. The method of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is used to investigate the above-mentioned causalities and to cluster observations based on similar combinations of conditions (i.e., drivers) and outcomes (i.e., positive or negative variations in GHG emissions from agriculture between the end and the beginning of the CAP programming period). The results reveal that the increase in GHG emissions from agriculture over the study period is mainly attributable to the low share of agricultural land under management contracts targeting climate change mitigation and carbon sequestration through the CAP. CAP payments coupled with production were found to contribute to further increasing GHG emissions from agriculture in some eastern and northern EU countries. Livestock concentrations, income support payments and the high price of agricultural land drive the increase in GHG emissions for other central and eastern EU countries. The paper concludes by addressing existing shortcomings due to conflicting interventions in the current CAP strategic plans.

The present study aims at investigating the potential impact of agricultural policies on GHG emissions from agriculture across the European Union. The study begins with a brief analysis of the context of implementation of the 2014-2022 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), within which many interventions were designed to improve sustainability and increase competitiveness. It follows a description of the structural changes the European agriculture is witnessing, that are both influenced and contribute influencing policies. The method of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is used to investigate possible causalities and to cluster observations based on similar combinations of conditions (i.e., drivers) and outcomes (i.e., positive or negative variations in GHG emissions from agriculture between the end and the begin of the CAP programming period). The results reveal that the increase in GHG emissions from agriculture over the study period is mainly attributable to the low share of agricultural land under management contracts targeting climate change mitigation and carbon sequestration through the CAP. CAP payments coupled with the production is found to contribute to further increasing GHG emission from agriculture in some eastern and northern EU countries. Livestock concentration, income support payments and the high price of agricultural land drive the increase in GHG emissions for other central and eastern EU countries. The paper concludes addressing existing shortcomings due to conflicting interventions in the current CAP Strategic Plans.