The University of Bologna – UNIBO

The University of Bologna – UNIBO (www.unibo.it) is the oldest university in the Western world founded in 1088. It includes 33 Departments in charge of organising scientific research and teaching and learning functions in the broad areas of Sciences, Technology, Medicine, Humanities, Social Studies. Unibo has around 85.000 students, 209 Degree programmes, and around 5900 research and teaching staff. The Department of Agricultural Sciences’ mission is the benefit of society to foster food and agricultural sustainability and prosperity. The Agricultural and Food Sciences and Technologies is involved in economic research concerning the agriculture sector, the processing, the food and non-food destination of agricultural products. Research activity is focused on value chain management and of local and international markets of agroindustrial products, distribution and consumption of agricultural and food products, healthy food and consumer behaviour, national and international agribusiness, agro-food marketing, farm management, innovation processes, food, rural, agricultural and agro-environmental policies, environment evaluation, rural and land appraisal and the integration of economic and agro-zootechnic models. Specifically, the agrifood system is explored in its economic, political, managerial and evaluation aspects concerning production, processing, distribution, the market and consumption. The department consists of about around 80 researcher and teaching staff. The department collaborates with many agriculture and food industry associations and SMEs in Italy and its location in the Italian food valley favours the development of further contacts.

UNIBO will contribute to the causal analysis work in WP2-6 and participate in the workshops linked to the development of the model framework. Contributes also to WP3 and case study work in WPs4-6. The Deputy WP4 leader is Prof. Samoggia.

The Sintef Team

Dr. Antonella Samoggia

(female)She is researcher and expert in Food Economics and Marketing at the University of Bologna –Department of Agricultural Sciences and consultant for Regional Governments and Territorial Agencies. Her research interests are mainly based upon value chain analysis and management, agrofood system competitiveness and sustainability, food marketing, agriculture-food-health-nutrition nexus, internationalisation processes, food and rural development policy, policy evaluation, territorial marketing. She teaches graduate courses in Food Economics and Marketing. She has been a consultant to Italian Regional Governments and Regional Development Agencies and evaluator on project proposals of USDA, European and Italian regional funding. Previously she worked in European Commission in Brussels and at the London School of Economics and Political Science as researcher. She has peer-reviewed publications on indexed journals on issues focused on agro-food chain and system and food marketing. Previously she participated in European funded research projects (FP6, FP7, Interreg, Twinning, etc.) and nationally and regionally funded projects “CHANCE”, “EUROCROP”, “NETGROW”, “ORT-BIO”, “PACMAN”, “ITAES”, “BETTER”. She organised an international event in food marketing “International Symposium in Food Research Marketing” in June 2016 in Bologna.

Dr. Aldo Bertazzoli

(male) Full Professor at the Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences and Technologies, University of Bologna. The research activity is focused on the market issues of agro-food products (analysis of the agro-food product value and supply chains and the creation of added values). Member of several national and international scientific associations, and member of the editing committee of the “Rivista di Economia Agroalimentare”. Involved in the Scientific Committee of “IHSH – XIII International Symposium on Apricot Breeding and Culture” and “WPSA – XX European Poultry Conference”. He contributed or coordinated a number of EU and nationally funded research projects “CHANCE” and “ORT-BIO”.

Dr. Rino Ghelfi

(male) Rino Ghelfi’s research areas are: farm management, competitiveness of the agro-food chains, rural real estate, and of the evaluation of the economic impact of agricultural policies and labour economics. Has experience in executing and managing applied research projects in and around the agro-food economics sector. Recent and relevant research projects are: “EUROCROP” (FP6) contributed on revising challenges and scenarios analysis; “NETGROW” (FP7) contributed in the investigation of the factors contributing to food companies high/low network performance, the consequences of high/low performance for food SMEs, formal network organisations and policymaking. Since 1991 he is the supervisor of Farm accountancy data Center – University of Bologna devoted to the study of methodologies aimed at the farm accountancy, at the building and the analysis of financial statements, as well as at the evaluation of the economic performance of the farms.

Dr. Bettina Riedel

(female) is a research fellow at the Department of Agricultural Science of the University of Bologna. She holds a PhD in Agricultural economics from Humboldt-University Berlin. She worked in different projects aiming to analysis and improve competitiveness of local/national fresh food value chains in Germany, Italy, and Spain. Her research interests are food value chain analysis, food marketing, consumer research towards healthy food, currently with a special focus on coffee, food and nutrition and food culture.