RECONNECTING AGRICULTURE AND FOOD: METHODOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR THE ANALYSIS OF AGRO-FOOD SYSTEMS IN METROPOLITAN REGIONS

Feeding the city is one of the most relevant challenge for modern productive systems, as it concerns food security and safety, the quality of food products, energy consumptions and the sustainability of the urban model in general. Cities have a strategic role in developing sustainable food systems, but are more often affected by several interrelated factors that modify their capacities of food provision - from population increase, to urbanization phenomenon and land use conflicts, to the progressive globalization of food supply and trade. On the other hand, the shift towards demand-driven agro-food systems underlines the key role of consumers and their preferences for more local food, to which the productive system is required to adapt and adjust. Thus, the complex structure of a regional agro-food system should be able to respond to the challenges of domestic supply, to compete in the global context and finally to meet citizens’ demand for a direct relationship with food producers through the development of local systems. in this sense, it is therefore needed the enhancement of proximity agriculture, the exploitation of local resources, teh promotion of system’s potentialities, in order to diminish the distances between production and consumption sites and support the ties between the supply-demand pattern and the territory. In practice, this reconnection is ensured by the several existing alternative food systems, also encouraged by the regulatory framework proposed by policy makers. Despite the sectorial and cross-sectoral initiatives accordingly implemented, they provide some opportunities and limits as well. In particular, given the increasing importance of food-related initiatives in urban areas, the integration of policies - both horizontal and at different administrative and territorial levels - is of fundamental importance. It derives that specific interventions targeted at this, should be based on appropriate cognitive analysis that investigate the capacity of the system and local resources to adequately respond to urban food demand. Thus, it is provided a methodological framework, which on one hand can describe the regional agro-food system and, on the other hand, assess its capacities: a multidimensional approach that combines productive and economic aspects, and simultaneously returns the compliance and adequacy of food production, their contribution to the regional economic balance and vitality, their market orientation, in order to provide precious information for policy-makers.