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The “Valle dei Cavalieri” community cooperatives of Succiso and "Briganti di Cerreto" of Cerreto Alpi, inprovince of Reggio Emilia are included in the parkof the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, and were born to givea response to the depopulation of inland areas. In fact, the socio-economic situation of the regional mountains, the birthplace of the two cooperatives, hassuffered from the late 1950s onwards, a strong process ofemigration to the areas of the plain. Consequently, the mountain areas have been depleted of resourceshuman activities resulting in a contraction of many activities, in particular agriculture and pastoralism,whichtheyhavealways represented the key sectors of the economyMontana. This strong depopulation has put indiscuss the presence of many services of social as well as economic value, such as the bar, the shopgroceries and restaurants. Both cooperatives, thanks to their peculiar and unique business model, in the last decades have been able to create sustainable activities to support the rebirth and development of the area and its population. It is in this context that the initiative of the European project LIVERUR,in which the two cooperatives participate,involvesthem with the aim of enhancing theirsexperience as an innovative social and economic development model and support them in defining further tools and paths to strengthen this model.

The CAP has introduced a higher allocation of the budget to the Agri-environmental schemes and Organic Farming over the years. In order to estimating impacts at regional level the evaluation of a Rural Development Programme single sub-measure have been considered. A FADN panel sample of Marche Region has been selected for years 2013, 2015. The application of a nonparametric matching model and the Difference-in-Difference estimator is presented. The environmental performance of organic farms is statistically different from conventional ones, therefore policy intervention has reached a positive effect. Instead, results on detected economic variables shown no differences between the two groups.

This work describes part of the research activities conducted within the ENERPAN project. The main aim of the project is to increase the agronomic and physiological knowledge concerning the suitability of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) genotypes for energy use in the Mediterranean environment. Our research activity focused on investigating different crop management systems, in order to optimize switchgrass biomass production. Three field trials were carried out in spring 2010: (i) six switchgrass varieties were compared assessing their morphological and physiological responses to the Mediterranean environmental conditions; (ii) two switchgrass varieties were studied to investigate the influence of water and nitrogen level on crop yield, (iii) the sustainability of switchgrass cropping system was evaluated, at farm level for two different switchgrass varieties (e.g. production, energy balance, GHG emission etc.). Preliminary results on biomass yield response to the environmental conditions and to crop management seem to show a good suitability of some switchgrass varieties to our environment with promising biomass productions. Furthermore, nitrogen and water levels seems to affect switchgrass yield. Our results referred just to the first year of growth, for this reason, further studies are needed to evaluate switchgrass performances in the long term and to estimate the crop cycle length of this perennial species in our climate., Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 615-618