Biodiversity for food and agriculture: multi-actor conservation strategies in italian supply chains

Current agri-food systems depend on biodiversity for resilience and productivity but simultaneously contribute to its decline through intensification, land conversion, and soil degradation. This threatens essential ecosystem services, including soil fertility, crop yields, climate mitigation, and food security. While biodiversity’s importance spans the entire agri-food system, research has largely focused on farm-level practices, overlooking the role of downstream actors like processors and retailers. A sustainable transition requires a multi-level approach integrating biodiversity-based practices across all supply chain stages. This research assesses biodiversity management across the agri-food supply chain, identifying key conservation factors at each stage. Using a mixed-methods approach, it combines quantitative and qualitative analysis with mathematical modeling. The first study examines biodiversity management in Italian agri-food supply chains, analyzing key actors’ strategies, barriers, and drivers. The second study explores the adoption of buckwheat among Italian farmers using agent-based modeling to assess the influence of contract pricing, adoption willingness, and diffusion scenarios. The third study evaluates how sustainability attributes impact lentil market prices in Italy through a Hedonic Price Model, focusing on biodiversity, organic certification, geographic origin, and packaging. By highlighting biodiversity practices across the value chain, this thesis underscores the role of all actors in fostering biodiversity-based systems. Despite case study and methodological limitations, the findings provide insights for future research and offer actionable managerial and policy recommendations to support sustainable agri-food systems.