BOOKS BY ANNA MARIA DI TRAPANI

The paper aims to determine the possible competitive advantage for farms thatadopt a short supply-chain strategy. In particular, by carriying out an analysis of asample of fruit and vegetable farms, we wanted to find out how the business relatesto the market and the reasons that induced the entrepreneur to move into a shortsupply-chain set up. The study was prompted by the wish to determine, empirically,the economic benefits arising from the adoption of the short supply chain. In fact,there is a vast literature on the economic benefits produced by the short supply chainsuch as the demand stability due to customer loyalty and the ability to influencedirectly the price through the reduction of production costs, especially oftransportation and packaging ones. In addition, the farmer may obtain greaterremuneration of production factors, re-appropriating a portion of the value thatusually gets eaten up during the various stages of the supply chain system, thusbecoming price-maker (Saccomandi, 1999). In particular, we focused our analysis ondetermining the net income of the entrepreneur who decides to pursue a shortsupply-chain strategy by comparing it, using the same parameters, with farms wherethere is not a short supply chain. From this empirical analysis it emerges that theshort supply-chain cannot be the only way to sell farm products, as it absorbs only apart of production. Nevertheless, it enables the entrepreneur the recoup a greaterproportion of production costs.

Il volume approfondisce alcuni aspetti di rilievo in materia di “misure di gestione per lo sfruttamento sostenibile delle risorse della pesca nel mar Mediterraneo”. La Politica Comunitaria per la Pesca, difatti, intende fissare nuove regole per la protezione e la conservazione delle specie marine e per la sostenibilità ambientale e sociale. Alla luce di ciò nasce l’esigenza di individuare strumenti innovativi di gestione sostenibile delle risorse e comportamenti responsabili.

La fragolicoltura siciliana in ambiente protetto: aspetti economici delle recenti innovazioni dei processi produttivi (di Antonio Asciuto, Anna Maria Di Trapani, Emanuele Schimmenti) - ABSTRACT: The protected cultivation of both large fruit and small fruit strawberries in Sicily, mainly concentrated in western Sicily, has been recently characterized by an increasing use of product and process innovations, strengthening the leadership of this area in the context of Italian early strawberry cultivation. The aim of the paper is to improve the knowledge of Sicilian protected strawberry sector, with reference both to its territorial features and to farm management. The investigated area is the province of Trapani (and particularly in Marsala district) for the important role it plays in the regional strawberry sector, accounting for about 7% of the relative national area. A microeconomic analysis, the aim of which was mainly to determine profitability of large and small fruit strawberry cultivations by means of various economic indicators, was carried out on a sample of 22 farms, where the following crop typologies were sorted out: one-year and two-year under tunnel cultivations of both frigo and fresh large fruit strawberry plants, one-year and two-year glasshouse soilless cultivations of frigo small fruit strawberry plants. The cropping techniques generally adopted in the farm sample are characterized by high manual labour inputs, as most cropping operations are quite difficult to mechanize. In order to identify the labour constraints affecting the potential expansion of strawberry enterprises, the annual farm working requirements of the different cultivations were analysed, as well as their temporal distribution. Moreover, harvest calendars have been reconstructed, as their width and positioning in the farming year are strategically important in relation to farm management and, above all, to the marketing stage. Microeconomic analysis has borne evidence of considerable profitability levels with regard to the studied typologies of large and small fruit strawberries, despite the fact that their production costs are rather high; the latter are actually more than offset by high values of the Gross Saleable Product per unit of cultivated area.