In collaboration with Federalimentare and the Professor Maurizio Notarfonso – Specialist of europrogettazione, environmental policies and young entrepreneurs of Federalimentare, we organized a dedicated short course, for the Specialized Master in Agribusiness Management and for the other students willing to participate, on the Agrifood Industry on a National and European Level
A course of 4 classes aimed at providing the students with information on how the most relevant national food federation works and pursues the interests of the global food industry system in Italy. Moreover, the course will introduce the most important related topics which belong to the agrifood sectors in Italy and at EU level (namely sustainability, research and innovation).
COURSE CONTENTS
LEARING OUTCOMES
Federalimentare is an institution and company that represents, protects and promotes the Italian Food and Beverages Industry. Which Represents the second-highest-ranking Italian manufacturing sector which accounts for 8% of the national GDP, with an annual turnover of over 145 billion of Euro.
The Italian Trade Associations for each food and drink sector are grouped together under Federalimentare, which represents almost 7,000 companies with more than 9 employees each, located throughout Italy.
Committed to working alongside the authorities in promoting a food model based on safety and quality requisites. It helps skilled entrepreneurs seize the best business opportunities in Italy and abroad, ensuring the core values of the Italian food culture are promoted worldwide whilst preventing imitations and counterfeiting.
Aware of the needs of food companies and promotes collective economic and social growth. It supports research and innovation, in keeping with tradition, by responding to market developments and new consumer needs.
Proud to represent Italy’s leading economic Sector, and is conscious of being the bridge between the Food Supply Chain and the European Union. Basic figures of the Food & Drink Industry (2019):
Federalimentare represents the first supply chain in the Country that purchases and processes around the 72% of the national raw materials and around the 78% of the food export. Represented by high brand food products the company export 35.4 billion € in total. Import 21.9 billion € in total with a trade balance of 13.5 billion of euros.
Sustainability, research and innovation in the Agrifood sector
In recent years, with the evolution of the competitive context and following a vast change in consumer needs, a change in the concept of corporate social responsibility has happened. In this concept, strategies cease to pursue the mere satisfaction of the social and environmental expectations of the corporate stakeholders and instead embrace a different and innovative approach, focused on the creation of shared value with the ecosystem, through the establishment of a relationship of trust and mutual support with all social actors.
This translates into the need for companies to identify those business strategies that combine the achievement of economic and financial objectives with the ability to generate social and environmental benefits capable of maintaining and increasing the well-being of the ecosystems on which any form of human activity depends.
From this point of view, the creation of a production model based on the principles of circular economy currently represents the most important opportunity for companies in different sectors to implement business strategies which, in accordance with this new way of understanding corporate social responsibility, are able to guarantee the necessary profits through a productive activity aimed at safeguarding and improving our planet.
Among the sectors that are most interested in the need for a change in production methods as much as in consumption habits, agri-food certainly stands out. Agri-food, a crucial productive sector for the global economy to which the livelihood of almost 8 billion people is directly connected, is characterized by a direct relationship between the companies that constitute it and the environmental and climatic phenomena, as well as the availability of key resources such as soil and water and the state of health of the different host environments.
It is therefore vital for agri-food companies to be able to design and implement innovative production strategies that can exploit action plans aimed at protecting the surrounding territories and natural environments. On the basis of these assumptions it is possible to identify four areas of intervention along the entire supply chain, which are associated with specific problems typical of the agri-food industry and for which companies in the sector must provide innovative solutions aimed at transforming these critical issues into sources of competitive advantage, not merely economic but also social and environmental.
These strategic areas concern two factors internal to the enterprise, namely the product and human resources, and two external factors, namely the territory and the environment.
