Nowadays, more and more consumers show a growing interest in healthy food products that may help to maintain or improve human health, such as honey. Honey has always represented a fundamental component of traditional medicine in many world cultures. However, only thanks to several studies carried out in the last years, its use is considered as an alternative and complementary medicine, namely apitherapy. In this way, honey is recognized increasingly by consumers not only as a natural alternative to refined sugar but as healthy food, as shown by determining an increase of its consumption worldwide. This study aims to explore the consumers’ determinants of honey consumption, trying to understand whether, and how much, therapeutic properties of honey affect the Italian consumers’ choices. The findings of this study, although exploratory, provide information on which quality characteristics influence honey consumption in Italy, revealing that, among quality attributes, the therapeutic properties of honey play an important role in affecting consumers’ behavior, followed by income, variety and taste. This could have some implications for producers and marketers as this information could contribute to defining effective marketing strategies for communicating to consumers the quality attributes of honey and its therapeutic benefits.

Purpose: Precision agriculture technologies play an important role in optimising practices to increase yields and reduce costs, contributing to socio-economic progress and environmental well-being, and playing a key role in addressing climate change. Viticulture is a strategic, input-intensive agricultural sector where precision technologies can make the use of resources more efficient without compromising profitability. The aim of this study is to evaluate the profitability of implementing precision farming systems, such as unmanned aerial vehicle surveying for the production of vigour maps, compared to the conventional cultivation system in two Italian wineries. Methods: The profitability of using precision farming tools in viticulture compared to conventional management techniques has been investigated in two Italian wineries over a four-year period, before and after the introduction of UAV technology. Results: The results demonstrate the usefulness and economic viability of precision agriculture technologies in viticulture. The vigour maps produced by the data collected with UAV technology allow both the identification of problems such as diseases, and consequently the planning of phytosanitary treatments, and selective grape harvesting, which allows a significant improvement in the quality of the harvested grapes. Conclusion: The results demonstrate the usefulness of precision technologies for cost-effective and sustainable vineyard management, satisfying a market segment made up of stakeholders who are increasingly sensitive to environmental issues.

The UN 2030 Agenda implicitly recognizes the crucial role of the agricultural land market in several Sustainable Development Goals, particularly those related to food security, environmental sustainability, and economic growth. However, the dynamics of agricultural land prices are highly complex, shaped by multiple economic, social, and environmental factors, making it essential to conduct a systematic analysis of the mechanisms driving their variability. This study aimed to identify the key factors influencing agricultural land prices, both at the microlevel (parcel) and the macroeconomic level (country). To achieve this goal, a systematic literature review was conducted using the PRISMA 2020 guidelines. The analysis highlighted how intrinsic factors (soil fertility, access to water resources, plot size, and location) and extrinsic factors (urban pressure, fiscal policies, demographic changes, and climate variations) interact in the determination of land prices. The results suggest that the growing demand for agricultural land, combined with competition from other land uses, is contributing to a significant variation in market values, with implications for the sustainability of the agricultural sector. This study provides a framework for investors, policymakers, and researchers, highlighting the need for more transparent land policies, incentives for sustainable land management, and tools to counter land price speculation.

In the current Italian real estate market, estimates of the market value of rural properties are carried out by appraisers mainly using the single-parameter comparison procedure and, less frequently, the income capitalization method. To overcome problems of appraiser subjectivity and other issues related to these methods, and to gradually comply with real estate appraisal standards, this research paper aims to develop and validate a scientifically rigorous method. This article carries out a first attempt to apply the mixed approach based on the integration of Market Comparison Approach (MCA) and General Assessment System (GAS) to agricultural land, currently used only in the field of urban real estate appraisal. The study focuses on the first steps of this valuation procedure: choice of the parameters which characterise the market segment and identification of the land characteristics to be included in the procedure. These two steps are preparatory to the following phase concerning the estimate of marginal prices, which represents the core of the whole valuation procedure. In the current Italian real estate market, estimates of the market value of rural properties are carried out by appraisers mainly using the single-parameter comparison procedure and, less frequently, the income capitalization method. To overcome problems of appraiser subjectivity and other issues related to these methods, and to comply with real estate appraisal standards, this research paper aims to develop and validate a scientifically rigorous method. The Market Comparison Approach (MCA) is used as a starting point for a comparative multiparameter approach, which is currently only used in the field of urban real estate appraisal.This paper carries out a first attempt to apply the MCA to agricultural land, contributing an initial exploration of developing the proposed methodologies. Specifically, this paper reports the first steps that have been carried out in this line of research: choosing the parameters to identify the market segment; identifying the characteristics to include in the procedure for which to determine the respective marginal prices.

The Land Cadastre, as an inventory of all relevant real estate in a territory, and most importantly, as a national tax system is, or at least should be, the protagonist of fiscal, social and civil implications affecting the Italian context. According to unitary farmland incomes, the last revision dates back to 1978-1979, a period that no longer reflects the country’s current socioeconomic situation and does not consider the changes the land market has undergone over the years. Through the analysis of 183 purchases and sales of agricultural land in two districts in western Sicily, this research aims at verifying the adequacy or inadequacy of the current cadastral tariffs. Based on the prices surveyed and the cadastral farmland incomes, some indicators were constructed showing, on the one hand the absence of a strict correspondence between these two values and on the other hand the actual presence of fiscal inequality for all the crop qualities examined; and, consequently, the need for revising cadastral tariffs or for reforming tax system of Italian Cadastre by replacing tariffs with market values.