Periurban Agriculture and Organic Farming: Investigating Synergies and Policy Implications

One of the most successful on-farm diversification activities in Italy is the adoption of organic farming: a bona fide entrepreneurial approach to differentiating products for specific economic targets as opposed to merely a survival strategy to avoid decline and abandonment. The main objective of this paper is to assess the positioning of organic farming in periurban areas as defined in Rural Development Programmes (RDPs). Using Italian FADN data and running a logit regression model, we compare urban and periurban farms to other groups of farms identified in the RDP to assess their propensity to switch to organic farming. The assumption is that periurban farmers are more oriented to supplying organic products than farmers in other locations, given their proximity to urban populations who are keen on consuming organic products and are willing to pay a premium price for them. This, in turn, activates other on-farm functions such as the supply of public goods and services. This synergy is also relevant for the design and targeting of specific policies in line with the type of area considered in RDPs.