Linking Multifunctionality and Sustainability for Valuing Peri-Urban Farming: A Case Study in the Turin Metropolitan Area (Italy)

Honey bee foraging and pesticide exposure in a desert urban agroecosystem

The negative impacts of industrial farming on honey bee health have been widely recognized regarding pesticide use and natural foraging habitat loss. An assessment of suitability of urban farms regarding honey bee health is necessary for sustainable development of agriculture and apiculture in urban settings. Urban farms that adopt organic farming practices with restrictions on synthetic pesticide use and conservation of natural habitat can potentially create an environment to mitigate these environmental stressors on honey bees. In this experiment, bee-collected pollen was taken from honey bee colonies that were located on five organically managed urban farms located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to evaluate pesticide exposure and forage use. We also explored the influence of hive equipment on honey bee health in a high desert climate. We found that honey bees on organic urban farms were not stressed by pesticides with limited pesticide types detected (2 out of 187), low residue levels (< 20 µg/kg) and low toxicity (either no, or low toxicity with LD50 at 1,450,300 µg/kg). Honey bees had access to diverse forage resources based on pollen barcoding data. When comparing hive equipment between 10-frame, 8-frame Langstroth and top bar hives, it was determined that 8-frame hives could significantly enhance honey bee health including colony survival and weight growth, comb construction and brood production. Our results suggest that organic urban farms are appropriate locations for securing honey bee health and food safety in a desert climate; while, the selection of hive equipment should be considered when mitigating environmental stress to colonies.

Agricultural Transformation and Its Impact on Ecosystem Services and Human Well-Being in Peri-Urban Areas: The Case of Xi’an, China

There is a gap in understanding the relationships between the transformation of agricultural landscapes, ecosystem services and human well-being in the peri-urban fringe of major cities worldwide. In this paper, we use semi-structured interviews, perception surveys, social surveys and field mapping to examine linkages between agricultural and landscape transition, ecosystem services and human well-being in five sample villages in Xi’an metropolitan zone, China. The results indicate that: (1) Agricultural change has increased landscape fragmentation, with a shift from grain to more profitable horticulture and nursery production. The farming system is more diversified and exhibits a multifunctional character. (2) This transformation has had a significant impact on the character of the agroecosystem. (3) The agricultural transformation towards greater multifunctionality has increased the supply of ecosystem services, including tourism-related activities, potentially improving human well-being. (4) Different combinations of activities in the sample villages were evaluated with respect to a well-being index, indicating the importance of combining horticulture and tourism. (5) Linkages identified between agricultural transformation, ecosystem services and human well-being may have significant implications for potential approaches within future studies.

Rural Tourism Destination: The Ligurian Farmers’ Perspective

Rural tourism is considered a high potential form of tourism, enhanced by the demand for more sustainable and nature-based solutions, and able to contribute to territory resilience. A rural area is not necessarily a tourist destination, but it might become one, if agricultural enterprises are willing to diversify their economic activities by investing in rural tourism, and local actors provide active support and co-participation. This research focuses on the development of rural tourism in hinterland, mountainous, and hilly areas of the province of Savona in Liguria (North-West of Italy) in order to gather the farmers’ perspectives about local rural tourism destination development. Liguria is known above all as a seaside tourist destination. In recent years, policy makers have initiated a debate with local actors to relaunch Ligurian tourism by trying to develop alternative forms of tourism, such as rural tourism. A sample of 32 farmers already proposing rural tourism activities such as agritourism were involved in a mixed methodological approach aimed at validating local interest toward rural tourism and collecting information for designing future local development policies. At first, a questionnaire set up by a panel of experts was carried out, followed by one-to-one semi-structured interviews, and finally the Nominal Group Technique (NGT) was used to identify local priorities, strategies, and tools. The results highlight the willingness of farmers to invest in the rural tourism sector, the presence of heterogeneous interests, and the complexity of management of the relationship among the various stakeholders. Findings are partially explained by the early stage of development of rural tourism in the analyzed area, a phase in which starting a constructive dialogue on objective and project ideas among all stakeholders seems to be a crucial priority among the farmers taking part in the study.

“Agro”, “Agri”, or “Rural”: The Different Viewpoints of Tourism Research Combined with Sustainability and Sustainable Development

The objective of this study is to review the different viewpoints of research addressing “agro”, “agri”, or “rural” tourism, ascertain the implications of relevant scientific articles and suggest future research avenues related to sustainability and sustainable development issues. A two-step systematic approach was followed in identifying “agrotourism”, “agro tourism”, “agro-tourism”, “agritourism”, “agri tourism”, “agri-tourism”, or “rural tourism” articles in the Scopus database. Articles were selected if they corresponded to the keywords: sustainable development, sustainability, local development; thus, 252 papers were selected. The findings indicate that the literature does not analyze integrated approaches to sustainability, sustainable and local development in depth. The results are discussed mainly on qualitative grounds, from the supply side and with limited policy recommendations. They also display that the papers mainly refer to single case studies and comparative studies are lacking.

Planning Peri-Urban Open Spaces: Methods and Tools for Interpretation and Classification

Today, planning an urban–rural interface requires redefining the planner’s role and toolbox. Global challenges such as food security, climate change and population growth have become urgent issues to be addressed, especially for the implications in land use management. Urban–rural linkages, socio-economic interactions and ecological connectivity are the main issues on which the new urban agenda and sustainable development goals focus. Thus, urban and peri-urban agriculture (professional and not professional) in urban–rural interfaces has a crucial role in the maintenance and enhancement of landscape quality, urban green spaces and ecosystem services. The research presented in this article adopts a holistic approach, with a special focus on open spaces, in order to understand the complexity of peri-urban landscapes and to identify homogeneous units. It also defines map-based indices to characterize peri-urban landscape types and identify main functions to maintain and enhance. The method was applied to the peri-urban area of Turin (Italy), and maps of spatial and functional classification at the landscape unit level were generated, as well as a map of critical areas to improve. Despite some minor limitations, the method and tools proposed appear to have a range of applications in the context of global challenges and from a landscape perspective.

Determining Food Stability to Achieve Food Security

Food security, as part as public health protection, constitutes one of the main objectives for countries aiming to ensure the health of all their citizens. However, food security is compromised worldwide by conflict, political instability, or economic crises, both in developed and developing countries. Conversely, because of the importance of agriculture to the economies of rural areas both in developed and developing countries, this sector can contribute to improving food stability, as well as to furthering food security. Thus, livestock and traditional meat products represent a key factor in ensuring food availability. Overall, biosecurity measures improve animal welfare by decreasing the occurrence of diseases that compromise the stability by causing fluctuations in the availability of meat and animal-derived food products such as milk, eggs, or traditional fermented products. As a consequence, an absence of biosecurity measures affects food security (in its quantitative definition, as described above) as well as the productive, sanitary, and environmental sustainability of the rural environment. Products of animal origin support local trade and the regional economy, while contributing to the availability of foods without great external dependence. The manufacture of foods of animal origin aims to create products that are durable and that maintain food availability for long periods of time, even during seasons with scarce resources. Thus, dry-cured or fermented meat products play an important role in food availability. Food security also refers to food access under healthy economic conditions; therefore, knowledge of the main tools that guarantee the safety of these kinds of food products is essential to achieving food stability and further food security.

A Typological Classification for Assessing Farm Sustainability in the Italian Bovine Dairy Sector

Italy is among the most important countries in Europe for milk production. The new European policies encourage a transition towards sustainability and are leading European dairy farms to follow new trajectories to increase their economic efficiency, reduce their environmental impact, and ensure social sustainability. Few studies have attempted to classify dairy farms by analyzing the relationships between the structural profiles of farms and the social, environmental, and economic dimensions of sustainability. This work intends to pursue this aim through an exploratory analysis in the Italian production context. The cluster analysis technique made it possible to identify three types of dairy farms, which were characterized on the basis of indicators that represented the three dimensions of sustainability (environmental, social, and economic sustainability) and the emerging structural relationships based on the structural characteristics of the dairy farms. The classification made it possible to describe the state of the art of the Italian dairy sector in terms of sustainability and to understand how different types of farms can respond to the new European trajectories.

Old but Not Old Fashioned: Agricultural Landscapes as European Heritage and Basis for Sustainable Multifunctional Farming to Earn a Living

Today, farmers are multioptional entrepreneurs, demanding far more skills than only those of agricultural production. The awareness of European agricultural landscape (EAL) values should enable farmers to create new business strategies. Open education repositories (OERs) based on online vocational education and training (VET) are still not widespread. The project FEAL (multifunctional farming for the sustainability of EALs) has brought interactive material online based on results of two questionnaire surveys performed in Germany, Italy, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. A survey of 31 experts confirmed that VET activities are very much needed for farmers. A survey of 28 farmers had different aims and content. Data collected from farmers were used to evaluate basic farm attributes, farmers’ characteristics, and keywords indicating the farms’ activities, multifunctionality and sustainability, and EALs, specifying the presence of nature- and landscape-protected areas. A decision-making schema, applying a collection of terms from literature analysis and the questionnaire’s results, is a support tool to develop a model of a farm that contributes to the preservation of the landscape’s character, strengthening the landscape’s quality, and sustainable business. The model presents the interactions of the farm (its territory and ancestral heritage, control of natural resources, tourism services and cultural events, public goods provision, and quality guarantees); socioeconomic strategies regarding quality, marketing, communication, business operation, and monitoring are proposed.

Effects of Urbanization on Farmland Size and Diversified Farm Activities in Japan: An Analysis Based on the Land Parcel Database

Peri-urban agriculture (PUA) has been widely regarded as a sub-field of multifunctional agriculture for improving the sustainability of urban environments. However, urban sprawl has both negative and positive effects on peri-urban farming, and the research on this issue in Japan is insufficient. This study aims to demonstrate the spatial distribution of farmland parcels in Tokyo and Osaka metropolitan areas and explore the synergistic effect of distance from cities and urban sprawl on the size of farmland parcels and farm-diversified activities such as direct marketing, farming experience, and environmentally friendly practices. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Poisson regression analyses were used with a nationwide agricultural land parcel Geographic Information System (GIS) database (Tokyo metropolitan area = 1,939,162 and Osaka metropolitan area = 1,507,072 parcels), in Japan, to specify the farmland locations and calculate the extent of urban sprawl. The results revealed that more than 50% of farmlands in the targeted areas were located within 4 km from the boundaries of densely inhabited districts (DIDs). Furthermore, with a decreasing distance from a DID, the urban sprawl had more positive effects on farmland parcel sizes and farm-diversified activities. These findings imply that PUA has a wider presence in Japan, and the peri-urban farmers may be capable of utilizing the multifunctional nature of intensively sprawled urban environments.

Quality Labels as Drivers of Peri-Urban Livestock Systems Resilience

Livestock farming systems have an important role in the territorial systems of the Mediterranean, but in the last twenty years the sector has undergone serious changes with an important decrease in the number of farms. The purpose of this study is to show the contribution of a local food certification to the resilience of peri-urban livestock farming system and of its food supply chain at territorial level. The focus is on the “Carne Bovina di Pisa” project, a private label promoted by the local livestock producers’ association, with the purpose of preserving biodiversity and provide farmers with an opportunity to strengthen their local marketing power. The case study is the peri-urban area of Pisa (Tuscany, Italy), representative of the urbanized Mediterranean coastal plains with high urban pressure on agricultural land and increasing agricultural abandonment in the peri-urban area. The analysis is based on the qualitative analysis of interviews to stakeholders and the quantitative figures about the changes in livestock system. Results show that the label has positively sustained both the resilience of farming systems and the local food supply chains.

Management and Perception of Metropolitan Natura 2000 Sites: A Case Study of La Mandria Park (Turin, Italy)

The European Commission promotes management practices for nature conservation and human well-being, requiring the involvement of users in Natura 2000 sites. The research aim was to investigate the user’s aesthetic perception in relation to the adoption of different management measures, within an Italian metropolitan Natura 2000 site. The research was performed in La Mandria Park in 2018 (1780 ha). The method was based on a participatory approach (interviews, questionnaires and participatory mapping), involving both park managers and users. Four main landscape elements were identified: lawns, woodlands, lines of trees and water bodies. Questionnaires (N = 232) were analyzed by descriptive and regression analysis. Mapped preferred places were analyzed using ecological indexes on 500 m land use buffers. A gendered perception of the aesthetic quality was detected, demonstrating that women are more strictly connected to nature than men. Users involved in park activities better perceived the aesthetic quality, while regular visitors had a worst perception. From participatory mapping (N = 137), it emerges that the eight preferred places are characterized by a mixed land use with different maintenance regimes and ecological values. Users’ perceptions should be integrated in a co-management plan in metropolitan Natura 2000 sites, combining nature conservation with user enjoyment.

Local Scale Prioritisation of Green Infrastructure for Enhancing Biodiversity in Peri-Urban Agroecosystems: A Multi-Step Process Applied in the Metropolitan City of Rome (Italy)

Urban–rural interfaces represent complex systems that require complex solutions for sustainable development and resilience against pollution, habitat fragmentation, biodiversity loss and impaired flux of ecosystem services (ES). Green infrastructure (GI) is increasingly recognised as an effective tool for addressing such a complexity, but needs priority setting to maximise benefits and minimise drawbacks of implementation. Therefore, a prioritisation approach focused on biodiversity and ES in peri-urban areas is required. In the present work, a systematic and hierarchical framework is proposed for setting priority GI objectives, location and actions aimed at enhancing local biodiversity, ES flux and farming sustainability in urban peripheries. By means of a case study in the Metropolitan City of Rome, the framework allowed identification of the main demand for ES and biodiversity; the most suitable location for GI implementation; and the best cost-effective actions. The GI implementation showed an improvement in terms of wooded hedgerow density, an increase regarding the ecological connectivity of riparian ecosystems, and an increment of agroecosystems designated to enhance the ecological network and wildlife support. Finally, the prioritisation framework contributes to fostering environmental benefits while complying with regulations and management practices from the regional to the farm/field decision level.

Agroecological Strategies for Reactivating the Agrarian Sector: The Case of Agrolab in Madrid

Considering the social and ecological obsolescence of the conventional agricultural model and the crisis faced by rural areas, innovative models based on collective initiatives and agroecological practices are emerging. Here, we present the use of a participatory farming lab as a space to reactivate the agrarian sector in rural and periurban areas of Madrid. The specific objectives of this study are: (1) to describe the project; (2) to identify participants’ profiles and motivations and (3) to identify the most socially valued ecosystem services and the actions collectively taken to enhance them. To do so, we have used the living lab conceptual approach and the ecosystem service lens. Data gathering included a combination of qualitative and quantitative techniques, including participant observation, informal and formal meetings, interviews, workshops and surveys. We found a diversity of motivations for enrolling in the program and 20 ecosystem services were selected as socially important. We also describe how the project has contributed to adopting agroecological practices to sustain those ecosystem services. Finally, we discuss the contribution of the project towards new and integrated rural development strategies, including its potential to promote cooperative solutions that enhance farming activity by also providing ecosystem services.

Perceptions of Agritourism and Cooperation: Comparisons between an Island and a Mountain Region in Greece

The lack of understanding and definitional inconsistencies regarding agritourism and the importance of cooperation in sustaining this kind of tourism are underlined in the literature. This study analyzes the perceptions of agritourism and cooperation from actors in the sector using a plurality of methods, including unsupervised (a) text mining and (b) sentiment analysis with the use of a lexical database, as well as (c) supervised qualitative data analysis. Based on the assumption that destinations with different geographic characteristics have different features and products, two different destinations as for its accessibility and tourism recognition were selected for comparison: (a) an island—Lesvos in the North Aegean Sea, and (b) a continental mountain region—Plastiras Lake, in Greece. The data were collected from personal in-depth interviews and with the use of semi-structured questionnaires. From a methodological perspective, all three methods provided unique insights on the study’s themes, and the overall image of agritourism and cooperation was positive. A common understanding seems important for cooperation and networking; however, training is needed not only for effective promotion of agritourism, but also for cooperation techniques, benefits, trust-building mechanisms and best practices.

Surplus or Deficit? Spatiotemporal Variations of the Supply, Demand, and Budget of Landscape Services and Landscape Multifunctionality in Suburban Shanghai, China

Landscape services are inevitably interlinked with human wellbeing. It is essential to assess landscape services and multifunctionality from both supply and demand points of view toward sustainable landscape management. This study focused on the spatiotemporal variations of the supply, demand, and budget of landscape services in suburban Shanghai, China, including crop production, nutrient regulation, air-quality regulation, soil-erosion regulation, water purification, and recreation and aesthetical value. A new index landscape multifunctionality budget (BMFI) was developed, integrating the budget status of surplus and deficit with landscape management. Spatial autocorrelation analysis and regression analysis were conducted to identify spatial agglomeration and influencing factors of BMFI. Pronounced spatiotemporal heterogeneity of landscape services was observed. BMFI was in surplus status in 2005 and 2010, but turned to deficit in 2015. Landscape service budgets generally followed the spatial pattern of positive in the west and negative in the east. Budget deficits covered half of the villages in 2015, which were mainly situated near central Shanghai with high population density, high average income, and a fragmented and less diverse landscape pattern. Rapid urban sprawl and the following land-cover changes are the main drivers for the spatiotemporal variations. Landscape function zoning with effective economic development and ecological conservation policies can comprehensively improve the competitiveness achieving sustainable future.