Retail food waste represents a minor fraction of the total amount of food waste produced along the food supply chain (tenfold lower than the quantity of food disposed of by consumers at home). However, the role of retailers is crucial in shaping both the behavior of upstream food chain actors and the preferences of consumers. This paper studies the causes of food waste in retail stores and discusses potential mitigating actions based on the results of nine focus groups held in 2017 with 67 foods category managers. Participants used sticky notes to outline both the causes of in-store food waste and potential actions to address it. Sticky notes reporting 228 causes and 124 actions were collected during the study. Data were analyzed across thematic macro-categories and linked to the responsibility of supply chain actors, including managers at all store management levels. Results revealed that food category managers consider in-store operations (which include their actions and those of their subordinates) to be most responsible for retail food waste. However, when it comes to proposing actions against food waste, they believe that store managers are mainly responsible for the implementation of waste reduction actions. This study suggests that food category managers are key actors to involve in the fight against retail food waste. Greater effort should also be put towards informing and encouraging store managers to take action against food waste in supermarkets.

The term monoculture is widely used in the scientific literature concerning the agricultural sector. However, it is very difficult to find a clear and shared definition of this term. This study investigates the concept of monoculture in agricultural areas where high specialization in a specific crop is observed. Therefore, we refer to a territorial-level definition, which associates the idea of monoculture to the prevalent presence of a crop in a region including many farms. The objectives of the paper are: (i) to define indicators capable of verifying the existence of this condition; (ii) to test the ability of such indicators in identifying the effective presence of a monoculture. A set of Italian areas identified as monoculture in the recent literature were selected to carry out a quantitative analysis, assessing different indexes of monoculture. On the basis of the obtained results, such an analysis should help in comparing the monoculture indexes and fostering a discussion on their suitability and descriptive capacities.

The paper proposes a possible way of spatially representing sustainability in Italy. For this purpose, the ecological footprint approach was used as a methodological framework to assess the level of sustainability of the 8092 Italian municipalities. For each municipality, the exploitation of ecosystem services, assessed by the ecological footprint indicator, and the corresponding availability of biological capacity, associated to an indicator, have been calculated and compared, thus generating a map representing the relative sustainability of Italian municipalities. The results show a very scattered distribution of ecological balance, wherein unsustainable conditions characterize more than 60% of the territory and almost 95% of the Italian population. Despite the limitations of the methodology and some assumptions regarding the ecological footprint assessment at the municipality level, the study represents an attempt to produce an innovating tool that, based on an operational definition of sustainability, can represent natural resource exploitation at the local level, and provide useful information to address coherent and targeted environmental policies of sustainability.

Specialized agricultural systems may have a strong environmental impact, thus affecting the sustainability of production. The aim of this study is to evaluate the overall environmental impact of the hazelnut production, focusing on the main Italian production area, which is located in the province of Viterbo (central Italy). The theoretical approach adopted in this study refers to the paradigm of ecological economics, recalling the concept of strong sustainability through the conservation of natural capital and its non-replacement with economic capital. This environmental sustainability of farming systems is assessed through the ecological balance (EB) tool by comparing the availability and use of natural capital in each farm scenario. This allows to understand the extent of the load generated on the environment by the different farm’s typologies, as well as the impact on the entire territory where hazelnut cultivation is predominant. For the assessment, local typical farm scenarios are assessed through a Delphi consultation of a panel of experts, thus characterizing the cultivation techniques most frequently adopted in the area. Three typologies of representative farms emerge, which mainly differ for cultivation method and dimension. Cultivation methods associated with the larger farms (both conventional and organic) generate a positive contribution to EB, whereas small farms (conventional) have a negative EB due to the high utilization of inputs. However, the positive balance of the large farms compensates for the negative balance of the small ones. This determines a total positive environmental balance of the specialized production area of Viterbo, equal to 9412 gha. This means that hazelnut farming at a territorial level is sustainable thanks to specific farm managements, which can be promoted by policy-makers.

Tomatoes are one of the major productions in Italy. One of the main cultivation areas is the southern plain of Capitanata (Puglia, Southern Italy). However, a series of impacts from cultivation to distribution are connected to this production. Different methodologies have been proposed to evaluate and quantify these impacts from the single product to the supply chain. This work proposes a methodology for assessing environmental sustainability, using the agri-food chain of industrial tomatoes in a specific area of Italy (Puglia) as a case study. The theoretical approach adopted refers to the paradigm of ecological economics, recalling the concept of strong sustainability through the conservation of natural capital and its non-replacement with economic capital. This condition can be assessed through the ecological balance tool by comparing the availability and use of natural capital in economic activities. The aim of this study was to understand the extent of the load generated on the environment, thus evaluating whether the carrying capacity of the agricultural system was able to support the environmental load of the entire supply chain. The results show an overall unsustainability of the entire supply chain with a value of EB = −1911.49 gha. The agricultural phase is the only one to present a positive value EB = +62.99 gha, which fails to compensate for the impacts of the transport (EB = −349.13) and industrial (EB = −1630.96) phases. To our knowledge, this is the first study to assess the sustainability of the tomato food chain using the ecological footprint method. In the agricultural sector, there is a constant search for tools capable of combining economic efficiency and environmental sustainability. In this sense, the ecological footprint methodology provides essential information that can be used by policymakers of different levels to define sustainable development strategies.

The study addresses the assessment of environmental sustainability in agriculture, noting that the existing scientific literature has predominantly focused on negative environmental impacts, particularly greenhouse gas emissions from the livestock sector. It argues that a comprehensive evaluation of farming systems should go beyond impact-based metrics and instead compare the demand and supply of natural capital, using appropriate methodologies such as the ecological footprint (EF). Accordingly, the objective of the study is to analyze the environmental sustainability of fattening pig farming systems in Italy by applying the EF to compare a virtuous case-study farm (located in Umbria, 72.4 ha of utilized agricultural area, and 1960 pigs per year) with a representative sample of ninety-four specialized pig-fattening farms drawn from the Italian FADN 2023 database. The results show the following marked differences between the two systems: the case study exhibits a positive ecological balance (EB = +50.1 gha; IEP = +0.69 gha/ha), while the FADN sample displays, on average, a negative ecological balance (EB = −167.6 gha) and a strongly negative sustainability index (IEP = −3.84 gha/ha). These findings indicate that, in a sector characterized by generalized environmental unsustainability, the preservation of natural capital can be achieved not only through low-impact technical solutions, but also by addressing structural factors (e.g., livestock density per unit area and the presence of non-productive land uses). Overall, the study demonstrates that sustainability assessment requires explicitly comparing natural capital demand and supply, rather than merely quantifying emissions.