La Filiera Corta: Una Possibile Strategia Per Migliorare La Competitività Dell’Azienda Agraria

The paper aims to determine the possible competitive advantage of farms which undertake a strategy of short supply chain. In particular, through an analysis of a sample of fruit and vegetable farms, we wanted to know how the business relates to the market and the reasons that induced the entrepreneur to begin a process of short supply chain. The study comes from the need 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 chain such as the demand stability due to customer loyalty and the ability to influence directly the price through the reduction of production costs, especially of transportation and packaging ones (Garfish et al., 2009; Bigi, 2005; Cicatiello, 2008; Graziano, 2008). In addition, the farmer may obtain a higher remuneration of production factors, reappropriating of a portion of the value that usually dissipates in the various steps of the supply chain, and so becoming pricemaker (Saccomandi, 1999). In particular, we focused our analysis determining the net income of the entrepreneur who decided to pursue a strategy of short supply chain comparing with the same parameter in the absence of short supply chain. By empirical analysis emerges that the short supply chain can not be the only mode of sale of farm products, but it absorbs only a part of production that, nevertheless, allows to achieve a greater remuneration of the productive factors conferred by the entrepreneur.