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Land grabbing is a phenomenon that has spread widely over the last two decades and which involves rich and emerging countries and international companies as protagonists in the large-scale acquisition of land in developing countries. Through the development of an econometric model that takes into account the annual size of land grabbing in the African countries, the research aims to understand the main intrinsic factors, linked to the hosting countries, that guide the large-scale acquisition of land by foreign investors. Results show that the presence of a high debt towards foreign organisations, the high availability of virgin lands, the strong vocation of the hosting country for the cultivation of cereals, and the dependence on foreign markets for the supply of food commodities would be some drivers that guide foreign investors to grab land in African countries for the cultivation of agricultural and food crops. In light of the economic, social, and environmental consequences of the phenomenon, the study provides interesting managerial implications for foreign investors and useful political indications for governments and policy-makers, and it lays the groundwork for future research.

The aim of this work is to investigate the main enabling factors facilitating the diffusion of the emobility in the food delivery sector through the analysis of the Deliveroo case study. Deliveroo s.r.l. has been chosen for two main reasons. First, the growing importance of the company in the food delivery market, with an annual turnover increase of +120 million euros in 2017, becoming one of the major national players for food delivery. Second, the company recently adopted a strategy to support the diffusion of electric mobility for home delivery through the subscription of specific agreements.

In recent decades, the fish stocks have been increasingly depleted, due mainly to the overfishing and illegal fishing. The perception of excessive fishing capacity led in the early 2000s to a review of the Common Fisheries Policy and the approval of regulations aimed at recovering depleted fish stocks and achieving greater sustainability in the sector. At the same time, the environmental awareness of consumers has grown, resulting in a greater attention towards sustainable products. Despite the new trend in consumption, few scholars have so far focused on consumer habits of sustainable fish products (Kirby and Ward, 2014; Asche et al., 2015; Asche and Bronnmann, 2017). To fill this gap, the aim of this study is to explore the main factors affecting the intention of consumers to choice sustainable fish products.METHODOLOGYTo achieve this purpose, a questionnaire was developed based on previous empirical studies on this topic (Grunert et al., 2011; Panda et al., 2020; Kiluchi-Uehara et al., 2016) and conveyed through the main social networks. The survey was carried out in Italy and Spain, two of the most important EU fish producers countries (EUMOFA, 2020), during the period January-February 2020. At the end of the survey, we obtained 324 complete questionnaires, with reference to the Italian market, and 289 for the Spanish one. The data obtained concerned information on the frequency of fish consumption, quality attributes of the purchased products, the values and beliefs of consumers, as well as their socioeconomic characteristics. Then, we performed two Probit regression models, respectively for the Italian and Spanish samples, in order to identify the main factors affecting the intention of consumers to choose sustainable fish products.RESULTSResults reveal a greater willingness of Italian consumers (82.1% of the respondents) to choose sustainable fish products, than Spanish consumers (69.2%). Furthermore, the research suggests that those who claim to have strong values of environmental protection and those who are sensitive to altruistic values are more likely to choose seafood produced in a sustainable way. Similarly, the importance associated to the presence of eco-labels on purchased fish products affects positively the intention of consumers to make seafood choices more sustainable. With reference to the socio-economic variables, younger consumers show a greater probability to choose sustainable fish products.CONCLUSIONSThe paper presents interesting evidence on the intention of the consumers to commit themselves to make seafood choices more sustainable, showing the main factors affecting this behaviour. Furthermore, the results of the study provide practical implications. On the one hand, the work suggests new insights for entrepreneurs and fish industry operators to define their marketing plans based on the characteristics of consumers. On the other hand, findings provide to policy makers hints for defining awareness campaigns among the population, aimed to increase sustainable purchasing choices by consumers. Despite this, the research is not without limitations, due to the online sampling method, which does not provide a representative sample of the investigated populations. For this reason, future research could extend the investigation to a wider audience and other European countries.

This study analyses the impact of third-party voluntary certifications on the asset of wineries operating in the Southern Italian regions. The study carried out both quantitative and qualitative approaches, with data extracted from the AIDA Bureau van Dijk International Database (including performance indicators). The analysed sector belongs to 11.02 ‘Manufacture of wine from grape’ of the Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE). The econometric elaboration (regression) was carried out by means of STATA software 14. Comparing certified and no certified wineries, results show a better asset performance of certified wineries, confirmed by a positive relationship between higher revenues and bigger size. The adoption of voluntary certifications requires the presence of highly qualified people, capable of managing innovations of product or process. Wine managers should consider that the expected impacts of the adoption of voluntary certification are not independent from both targeted business scopes and institutional context where the winery operates, being strictly linked to specific market and seller strategic decisions, including customer centricity approaches. For what in our knowledge, this work is the first attempt in investigating the impact of voluntary certifications in the Sicilian wine industries. Results are thus of relevant importance and originality and able to suggest new insights on business assets management for the wine industry, enabling managers to better approach the decision to get certified through sustainable standards.

Consumers have always shown a marked concern for the novel technologies. The treatment of foods with ionizing radiation, not entirely new, has always been a major concern among consumers for the impact that the consumption of treated food could have on health. The aim of this paper is to investigate Italian consumer attitudes towards the irradiated food and in particular the perceived risk and the acceptability of these technology. A survey was carried out in Italy by administering an on-line questionnaire to a sample of 392 consumers. The results of the study highlight a low level of knowledge of food irradiation, often associated with nuclear radiation and doubts about the effect that the consumption of irradiated food can have on human health. Moreover, there is a marked need, expressed by interviewees, to acquire more information on the technology and the benefits that can be obtained. This study has some political, managerial and ethical implications.

This preliminary study contributes to enrich the empirical eviendences on the role and impact of SM technology adoption in the Italian wine sector. In particular, the aims are to (i) understand the reasons that guide entrepreneurs to adopt SMs, (ii) identify the usefulness of SMs in the various business activities and (iii) examine the perception that the implementation of these tools has on the company's economic and organizational performance. In order to collect these ifnromation an electronic survey has been conducted among Sicilian wineries. Our findings show that the main raisons driving entrepreneurs to adopt SMs technology are the need to promote corporate image and to exploit a new communication channel. These tools are used to monitoring comments in order to understand both the attitudes towards purchasing and buying preferences and how messages are perceived by customers. Results confirm a positive effect of SM adoption in terms of corporate image and customer relationship management. This research has some theretical and practical implications. If appropriately used our results can support the entrepreneurial choices taking into consideration that these tools allow to improve the customer relationship management and in particular the corporate image of the firm into the market.

The paper investigates the practices of environmental sustainability implemented in viticulture to minimize the negative impact of agricultural operations on the environment. Through the use of an electronic questionnaire, developed on a theoretical approach based on the Stakeholders Theory and the Theory of Planned Behaviour, and sent to a sample of wineries of the Canton of Ticino, the research pursues a triple aim: (i) to understand which are the main practices and initiatives of environmental sustainability adopted at firm level; (ii) to identify the main stakeholders that affect the choices of managers and owners to orient the firms towards the adoption of practices aimed at greater environmental sustainability; and (iii) to identify the personal drivers that most influence the managers' orientation towards a lower impact on the environment. The results show that the most common practices are the reduction of chemical inputs and the minimization of soil working. In this sense, a significant weight is exerted by the pressures coming from regulatory, societal, and value chain stakeholders, that, together with the manager's perception on the environmental practices, influence the orientation of the firm towards strategies that have a lower impact on the environment. The small size of the sample does not allow generalizing the results, but it provides some suggestions from a managerial and political point of view and it gives new ideas for future research.

The objective of this paper is dual. The first is to identify the key factors that characterize the most successful organizational models of firms operating in the Greek wine industry. The second is to verify if the adoption of third party certifications influences the firms performance. In particular, paying attention on the internal resources of firms, the Resource based view approach is proposed as theoretical framework. Through a cluster analysis has been possible gather the wineries observed on the basis of a similar organisational model, while a non parametric test has been used in order to verify the influence of voluntary certifications on firm performance. Findings show that the most successful wineries are those the most modern, with a higher orientation toward adoption of voluntary certification and managed by expert managers or owners, with a good educational level. The results could provide useful information in order to improve own performances, especially for firms characterized by a limited availability of economic and physical resources.

Since ancient times Man and Soil have experienced interwoven links. Nowadays soil scientists continue to stress such links highlighting the importance of soil to provide man’s growing demand for food, water and energy, and also the soil’s importance in providing ecosystem services that affect climate change, human health and biodiversity. In soil management for agricultural purposes, pedotechniques to tailor soils suitable for table grapes cultivation in large-scale farming are used to get substantial financial returns. However farmers, in tailoring soils for high income crops, frequently do not take into account the fundamental objective of the pedotechnique, i. e. to meet the needs of man, avoiding any undesirable environmental consequences that may occur during handling of earthy materials. In fact, we should consider that any human intervention on the environment, could originate new soilscapes and new soils whose security should be verified. In this note, we report on an emblematic case study of pedotechniques application in Sicily (Italy). After stressing the threats to soil security derived by the presence of anthropogenically tailored soils for table grapes cultivation, we assess their economic sustainability, taking into consideration only the internal factors and excluding the external economic contributions that are allocated to social sustainability. To evaluate the effectiveness of the financial investment, results have been compared with profitability data related to the same crop without pedotechniques application. Results highlight that the transformation of the soilscape, from one hand, allows for considerable investment costs, on the other hand, the highest productivity and the consequent higher profitability of the cultivation, compared to the conventional plants, allow to amortize the startup costs. We cannot ignore that this transformation could trigger potentially a considerable decrease in quality of the environment and in pedodiversity.

Resource based view approach is proposed as theoretical framework in order to identify the existence of similar organizational models in a sample of firms operating in the Sicilian wine industry, and the key success factors for superior export success. The findings of this research show that managers’ age and wineries’ export experience in export success are the key organizational capabilities, that explain a firm’s strategic advantage over its competitors. The importance of these capabilities is further uncovered through the main characteristics of the clusters. The result informs strategy design at the firm level; wineries need to incorporate significant capabilities associated with managerial experience in exports into their organization.

Quality and environmental management systems have become prominent business strategic tools to address social and environmental problems. Several voluntary certification schemes have been developed in various economic sectors, as well as in the food one. Nevertheless, it remains unclear if a positive business profitability exists as a consequence of their adoption. Aims of this work was to compare two specific groups of firms operating in the wine industry, certified and non certified ones, in order to verify the existence of a positive impact directly belonging to the adoption of environmental and food safety proactive approaches. To this scope, a sample of 173 cellars located in the Southern Regions of Italy has been considered. Our findings demonstrate how the adoption of voluntary certifications positively influence some of the profitability ratios of firms. Moreover, a linkage of such profitability with firm size, leading to an interpretation mainly focused on specific trade channels managerial choices. This work suggests interesting inputs for academics as well as for wine managers, highlighting an environmental pro-active input typical of internationalization and trade channels strategies and policies in enabling not only the market diffusion of such kind of green tools but also the achievement of targeted positive profitability ratios. © 2016, SRAC - Societatea Romana Pentru Asigurarea Calitatii. All rights reserved.

Flavonoids are a group of polyphenolic compounds with different chemical structure and properties. These compounds may scavenge free radical species and other oxidants. In previous studies, we have observed that some polyphenols are able to cross the erythrocyte’smembrane and this process is influenced by the plasmatic albumin; in fact quercetin intracellular concentrations is albumin dose depending. The influence of flavonoids on catalase activity has been reported in some papers but the results are contradictory. Some authors have found an increase of catalase activity in cell in the presence of flavonoids. Others have observed any effect or even a decrease of catalase activity.The present work is based on a study of Krych’s, in which the influence of flavonoids on catalase in model system has been evaluated. Aim of this work was to study the role of red body cells in the antioxidant balance. The primary goal was to evaluate the antioxidant status of no-smokers and ever-smokers healthy subjects by the determination of the plasma antioxidant capacity and of the catalase activity of erythrocyte and then to evaluate if flavonoids (quercetin and luteolin) are able to modify the enzyme activity. This is a pilot study. Nine healthy subjects, aged 24-55 years were recruited. None of the subjects had any pathologies at the time of sampling. We assayed the CAT activity in erythrocytes isolated from whole blood of the subjects by the colorimetric assay and the plasma antioxidant capacity using the spectrophotometric method known crocin bleaching assay. The catalase activity was performed in human erythrocytes (control) and after the incubation of them with the flavonoids (quercetin and luteolin). The flavonoids were efficiently taken up by human erythrocytes in dose-depending manner. There was no significant difference in the percent accumulation of both molecules (quercetin and luteolin) inside the erythrocytes when incubated at the same concentration of 50μM. In physiologic condition the catalase activity varies from 28.6 mU/g protein to 40.6 mU/g protein. Data have shown that CAT activity of erythrocytes was significantly lower in ever smokers than in nosmokers. It was also found that Quercetin at the concentration of 100μM is able to increase the catalase levels in ever-smokers up to the normal values observed in no smokers. The study on the luteolin has not produced the same effects. In fact, Luteolin is able to reduce the CAT levels in no-smokers subject according with the data from Krych. The different actions of compounds on catalase can been explained as consequence of flavonoid interaction with enzymatic protein. The inhibiting action of the luteolin can be a consequence of a conformational change which occurs upon the flavonoid binding to catalase. This interaction changes the geometry of the substrate channel and thus inhibits the reaction of H2O2 with the heme center. Plasma antioxidant capacity was lower in no smokers than in smokers. An inverse correlation has been found between age and plasma antioxidant capacity. From the results of this study affirms that an oxidative stress condition is present in ever-smokers respect to non-smokers, but the quercetin is able to restore the erythrocyte oxidative stress condition of ever-smokers back to the normality. Further studies are necessary in the future to better investigate the role of luteolin on the catalase activity of human erythrocytes.

The aim of this paper is to lay emphasis on the main factors (economic, historical, structural, etc.) that affect Italian agri-food exports in the non-EU Mediterranean Partner Countries (MPCs). The authors estimate a gravity equation including some of the main variables found in the reference literature useful to highlight the main factors which influence the bilateral exchanges. The results show that the variables traditionally included in the gravity equation present the expected sign. In particular, Italian agri-food exports towards its neighbouring Mediterranean countries are positively affected by income of partner countries, colonial and historical ties, geographical proximity and the lack of importance of the agricultural sector in some partner countries.

In this paper after showing the productive and international trade background of the Atlantic bluefin tuna, we analyze the competitive position of Italy, important producer and exporter on world scale, compared with the main trade partners, carried out through competitiveness indexes based on trade data. The results highlight Italy's good competitive performance above all with Japan, which represents the main world reference market for the Italian product, but also with the United States, Malta and Turkey The Italian competitive advantage with these countries is stronger for the product taken into account. On the other hand, we can notice a competitive disadvantage with the traditional markets supplying bluefin tuna, and with Spain in particular The same is reckoned with the Southern Mediterranean countries which, in the last years, have contributed to increasing the world supply thanks to the spread of mariculture systems. In this background, the increasing interest in the Italian Atlantic bluefin tuna, by the United States in particular and by some Mediterranean countries and by Central Western Europe as well, could open new opportunities to the Italian trade.

Il volume raccoglie i risultati relativi all'attività condotta dal'UO di Palermo nell'ambito del PRIN Sviluppo rurale, distribuzione moderna, sicurezza alimentare: le prospettive dell'agricoltura biologica in Sicilia, area di ricerca "Distribuzione e prodotti tipici. In questo ambito l'indagine ha riguardato la ricostruzione della filiera dei prodotti bio in Sicilia, evidenziando le principali problematiche relative alle fasi di produzione, trasformazione e della distribuzione e commercializzazione dei prodotti. La ricerca mette in luce la fragilità delle caratteristiche strutturali della GDO a livello regionale e successivamente si focalizza sulla diffusione dei prodotti bio nella GDO della città di Palermo, prendendo in considerazione la loro diffusione e i prezzi sia nelle singole catene della GDO che per quanto riguarda la competitività in relazione ai circuiti specializzati.

Background: The effects of the bisphosphonate derivative zoledronic acid (ZA) on the > circulating levels of matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2), matrix metallo-proteinases-9 > (MMP-9), cathepsin B (Cath B) and urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) in > patients with bone metastasis (BMTS) and the possible correlation with the symptomatic > response induced by this drug in these patients were evaluated. Patients and Methods: > Proteinase levels were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) in the > plasma of 30 patients with painful bone metastases from breast or prostate cancer > undergoing multiple treatment with ZA (4 mg i.v., every 4 weeks). Healthy subjects > (HS) of both genders (12 female and 30 male) served as the control group. The > symptomatic response to ZA was assessed by the visual analog scale score (VAS). > Results: The median MMP-2 and MMP-9 pretreatment levels were more elevated in BMTS as > compared to HS (p¡Ü0.0001). Conversely, uPA levels were lower in BMTS p=0.0033; no > significant difference was observed for Cath B. ZA administration was associated with > a symptomatic response (VAS score¡Ü4) in 25/30 patients (83.3%) (p phenomenon paralleled a decrease of Cath B and MMP-2 plasma concentrations from > baseline values on week 12 (p=0.05). A similar trend, although not statistically > significant, was also noted for MMP-9 and uPA. However, no direct relationship was > observed between the analgesic effect induced by ZA and changes in the circulating > levels of these enzymes. Conclusion: These data show that ZA administration may > provide relief from bone pain in patients with diffuse skeletal metastases and confirm > a possible implication of cysteine proteinases and matrix metalloproteinases in bone > metastasis formation, but not in the pathogenesis of metastatic bone pain.

The antiproliferative effects of interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) and of its combination with doxorubicin (DXR) were studied on three tumor cell lines, the mouse B16 melanoma and Friend erythroleukemia and the human K562 erythroleukemia, both as DXR-sensitive (B16, FLC, K562) and resistant (B16-DXR, FLC-DXR, K562-DXR) variants; the latter lines were endowed with typical multidrug resistance (MDR). Growth inhibition by IFN-alpha was greater in B16-DXR and FLC-DXR than in their chemosensitive counterparts and was superimposable in K562 and K562-DXR. On the other hand, the combination of IFN-alpha and DXR turned out to be merely additive in B16, B16-DXR, K562 and K562-DXR; it was synergistic in FLC and antagonistic in FLC-DXR. Our results and those of others seem to indicate that synergy between IFN-alpha and DXR may occur rarely in MDR cells.