Bio-based and Applied Economics 3(3): 185-186, 2014

ISSN 2280-6180 (print) © Firenze University Press 
ISSN 2280-6172 (online) www.fupress.com/bae

DOI: 10.13128/BAE-15285

Editorial

Feeding the Planet and Greening Agriculture:  
Challenges and opportunities for the bio-economy

The 2007/08 commodities crisis and repercussions in the following years have shown 
the vulnerability of the global food economy to shocks coming from extreme weather 
events, financial or energy market disruptions. The repeated food shortages, exacerbated 
by agricultural policies aimed at reducing the domestic impacts of the world food crisis, 
raised concerns about the potential devastating impacts of a new era of global food scarcity 
on the world’s poor and on the world’s natural resource equilibrium. The estimated signifi-
cant increases of the people to be fed in the next thirty years and the expected nutritional 
improvements for a relevant share of the world population will imply a very substantial rise 
in the demand for agricultural production. To meet the increased food demand resulting 
from population and income growth, agricultural production will need to be 60% higher 
in 2050 than in 2006 (FAO, 2014). Because there is little scope for expanding agricultural 
land, except for some regions in Africa and South America, demand for agricultural land 
and water is expected in the next years to grow. In the past decades, agriculture has sat-
isfied increases in food demand by means of productivity improvements. Increasing agri-
cultural productivity growth is considered as a key factor for the improvement of food 
security in the next decades (Baldos and Hertel, 2014). However, recent evidence about 
a decreasing trend in yield growth of major crops increases concerns about the ability of 
agriculture to feed world population (FAO, 2014). Climate change and the reduction of 
water availability are likely to sharply affect productivity in agriculture and forestry, espe-
cially in regions where malnutrition is most prevalent. On the other hand, agriculture and 
forestry are key target sectors of climate change mitigation policies, in that their contribu-
tion to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions could be substantial. 

In this rapidly evolving scenario, the EU reformed its policies with the objective of 
developing a sustainable bio-economy, that is, an economy that satisfies the increase in 
food and energy needs, while ensuring the sustainable use of biological resources, bio-
diversity and environmental protection. Agriculture plays a key role in the “greening” of 
the whole economy. Recent reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy include greening 
measures, such as the introduction of greening rules farmers must follow to get a part of 
the CAP payments. 

The challenges and opportunities for the bio-economy and the new policy demand in 
this new scenario were the overall topic of the Third AIEAA Conference held in Alghero 
(Italy) 25-27 June 2014. The Conference included more than 80 papers addressing a range 
of research and policy issues such as: food and nutrition security issues in specific areas; 
the modeling and measurement of climate change impacts on bio-based productions; risk 
management strategies for climate change; innovations in the bio-technology industry 
and implications for the bio-based supply chain; cost of the policies aimed at mitigating 



186 Editorial

the effects of climate change on the bio-economy. The BAE Editor invited the speakers 
of the AIEAA Conference to submit their papers for this BAE special issue. Four papers 
published on this issue were selected after regular peer review from those presented dur-
ing the Third AIEAA Conference; they represent only an essay of the topics covered by 
the Conference. In particular, the paper by Justus Wesseler deals with the introduction of 
new biotechnologies in the agri-food industry, namely the genetically modified engineered 
crops, and analyzes the responses of the food producers, food processors, food retailers 
and consumers industry. Davide Marino and co-authors address the issue of the assess-
ment of the costs and benefits of Natura 2000, the European network of protected areas 
aimed at the protection of biodiversity, by analyzing two Italian case studies. The paper by 
Joseph Cooper and Benoit Delbecq deals with the new US income entitlement programs 
for agribusinesses, referred to as “shallow loss”, introduced by the US 2014 Farm Bill: 
more specifically, they propose an approach to assess the sensitivity of the farmers down-
side risk protection to marginal changes in the deductible of shallow loss program sce-
narios. Finally, the paper by Pisani and Burighel uses a social network analysis approach 
to assess the transnational cooperation projects promoted by the Local Action Groups in a 
specific Italian region.

Baldos, U.L.C., Hertel, T.W. (2014). Global Food Security in 2050: the role of agricultural 
productivity and climate change. The Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource 
Economics 58: 554-570.

FAO (2014). The State of Food and Agriculture 2014, FAO, Rome, 2014.

Margherita Scoppola
President of AIEAA