IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/frz/wpaper/wp2013_28.rdf.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Produzione Agricola e Beni Relazionali

Author

Listed:
  • Benedetto Rocchi

    (Dipartimento di Scienza per l'Economia e l'Impresa)

Abstract

The paper discusses the relevance of “relational goods” in studying the economics of agriculture and food supply chain. The quality of interpersonal relations and the dynamics of relational assets have been proposed as relevant concepts in the interpretation of the happiness paradox in developed economies. After a short overview of the literature, the concept of “relational goods” is used to discuss three specific topics: the role of personal relations in overcoming the information asymmetries in the agro-food system, the organisation of labour in agriculture and the emerging sector of social farming. Quality differentiation increases the importance of credence characteristics in marketing agricultural and food products. The creation of relational assets may ease the solution of this information problem. Moreover, emerging forms in the marketing of agricultural and food products, such as alternative food supply chains, community supported agriculture and farmers’ markets, can be better understood when the production of relational good is taken into account. The dynamics of personal relations is also relevant in explaining the variety of tenancy forms and models of labour organisation in agriculture. A historical example relative to share tenancy in Italy is used to discuss this theme. Finally, the growing sector of social farming (where farming activities are the basis of personal care of individuals with disabilities or social discomfort) clearly shows the economic and social relevance of relational goods. In social farming production activities become the opportunity for a personal “encounter” between the carer and the beneficiary. The nature agricultural production process seems peculiarly suitable to support these forms of personal care. The paper is closed by a discussion on policies to incentive the creation of relational assets in the agro-food system. The possible trade-off between economic incentives and gratuitousness of motivations in producing genuine human relations suggests an indirect approach. The institutional context and the specific regulations should widen the spectrum of modalities available to actors in arranging economic and market relations.

Suggested Citation

  • Benedetto Rocchi, 2013. "Produzione Agricola e Beni Relazionali," Working Papers - Economics wp2013_28.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
  • Handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2013_28.rdf
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.disei.unifi.it/upload/sub/pubblicazioni/repec/pdf/wp28_2013.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Corsi, Alessandro & Frontuto, Vito & Novelli, Silvia, 2022. "Relational goods and direct purchase from farmers: estimating the value of the relationship between consumers and producers," International Food and Agribusiness Management Review, International Food and Agribusiness Management Association, vol. 25(2), March.
    2. Corsi, Alessandro & Novelli, Silvia, 2015. "The value of direct farmers-consumers relationships as determinants of consumers' purchase choices," 143rd Joint EAAE/AAEA Seminar, March 25-27, 2015, Naples, Italy 202749, European Association of Agricultural Economists.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • D6 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics
    • Q1 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2013_28.rdf. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Giorgio Ricchiuti (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/defirit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.