The negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic have further exposed and exacerbated the structural weaknesses and inequalities embedded in the global industrial agri-food system. While the mainstream narrative continues to emphasise the importance of ensuring the uninterrupted functioning of global supply chains to counter COVID-related disruptions, the pandemic has also highlighted the resilience of small-scale, sustainable family farming and of spatially and socially embedded food systems. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of three surveys, this study examines organic and agroecological farmers’ responses to the first COVID-related lockdown (March–May 2020) in Italy, as well as the responses of grassroots alternative food networks (AFN) in the city region of Rome. The results show how local grassroots action played a significant role in ensuring food access, provisioning, and distribution, often in the face of delayed or insufficient action of mainstream food system actors and institutions. These grassroots responses identify opportunities and barriers for agri-food system transformation away from neoliberal, market-based interventions and towards policies that support food sovereignty and democracy in the context of localised, agroecology-based and more resilient agri-food systems.

This paper investigates how and to what extent European and national policies have financed Italian agritourism. It analyses financial support derived from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (First and Second Pillar) and national and local subsidies. For this purpose, the authors have proposed a comparative analysis between Italian agritourism and farms without tourism activities, by stressing the distribution of public financial supports concerning the 2007–2013 programming period of the European Union (EU) for Rural Development. The empirical analysis is based on the Italian Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) dataset. The data were stratified by altimetry zone and farm size. Descriptive statistics and the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) for each group were used. The main results show how the Second Pillar has mainly supported small and medium-sized farms with tourism activities and located in disadvantaged areas. This study could be useful to policymakers regarding the evaluation of the mission for diversification in agriculture, represented here by the carrying out of tourist activities on farms and the contribution for the retention of small-scale farms in marginal areas.

The aim of the paper is to evaluate the sustainability of Alternative Food Networks in Italy through the construction of a composite indicator, the Global Sustainability Index. The index is able to provide decision-makers with indications on synergies and tradeoffs between the different dimensions of sustainability. The methodological approach is of the quantitative type, and the information used in the study comes from a direct survey that involved 226 producers. The results show that the environmental indicators that take the greatest value are those concerning problems of great impact on the actual debate such as the loss of genetic diversity and the use of packaging for agro-food products. Regarding economic sustainability, the indicator with the highest value is related to the ability of the Alternative Food Networks to diversify sales channels. This evidence confirms the producers’ increasing difficulty to adopt mono-directional strategies, favoring a differentiation of markets and, consequently, a reduction of economic risks. In terms of social sustainability, two interesting evidences emerge: the considerable importance attributed to the information of the features of the products and the increase in work involvement following participation in the Alternative Food Networks.