In recent years, the environmental sustainability of agri-food systems has become a crucial issue. Agri-food firms are increasingly concerned with the implementation of viable environmentally friendly production processes. The environmental impacts of the table grape sector, as well as other fresh and not transformed food products, involve mainly the farming phase rather than the subsequent conditioning, transportation, packaging, and distribution phases. The purpose of this study was to assess the environmental impacts and the economic viability of three table grapes production models (i.e., early harvesting, normal harvesting, and delayed harvesting), based on the Italian tendone system, during the entire life cycle. The environmental impact analysis was performed using the life cycle assessment (LCA) approach, while the economic analysis was performed using the life cycle costing (LCC) approach. The results show that the early and the delayed production models generated the highest environmental burdens, but also the highest economic returns, compared to the normal harvesting production model. The main determinants of the environmental impacts and economic returns are discussed and some practical recommendations are given to improve the sustainability of all the surveyed production models, so to converge public and private interests.

The wine sector faces urgent challenges related to climate change, resource constraints, rising energy costs, and shifting consumption patterns. In this context, sustainability represents a lever of competitiveness and resilience, enabling producers to differentiate themselves through their connection with the territory and the preservation of artisanal practices. This is particularly evident for native varieties, such as the Apulian Primitivo, whose market repositioning is based on production choices that combine sustainability and craftsmanship, generating wines with distinctive organoleptic characteristics while also contributing to the environmental, economic, and social protection of the production areas. At the same time, the spread of e-commerce offers new opportunities to enhance these characteristics: online descriptions enrich the communication of details compared to the physical label, reducing information asymmetries and making signs of quality and sustainability more visible. Therefore, this study applies a hedonic model to estimate the implicit price of such practices, analyzing 656 Primitivo labels through simultaneous quantile regressions. The results show that sensory characteristics, such as alcohol content and ageing, determine the price throughout distribution, while identity and sustainable attributes have heterogeneous effects: ecological practices and Geographical Indications affect the lower quantiles, while indigenous yeasts and sapling vines are configured as premium signals in the upper segments.