Farms' Performance and Short Supply Chains in Italy: an Econometric Analysis

In spite of several cases study existing that assess the profitability of farms participating in direct sales activities (Brown, 2002; Brown and Miller (2008), no analysis has verified whether the notion that farmers participating in short supply chains are profitable holds to the empirical test. The objective of this analysis is that of testing econometrically whether farmers joining short supply chains do experience better performances, accounting for confounding factors and endogeneity of channel choice decision. To that end, we use the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) referred to 2010. Results indicate that participation in SSCs doesn’t positively contribute to farms profitability. We use this preliminary empirical evidence to shape future research steps in this domain, and namely to further investigate the differential impact of participation in SSCs on gross sales and variable costs.