SUSTAINABILITY AND CIRCULARITY OF AGRO-LIVESTOCK FARMING SYSTEMS: DESIGN, MANAGEMENT AND EVALUATION CRITERIA

The circular economy (CE) is an approach to sustainable development that is gaining ever more attention among academics, politicians, and people in business. Few authors indicated the CE as a tool to achieve the objective of sustainable development. The need to move from the linear “take-make-waste” to a circular development model, which reduces the pressure on the environment, is increasingly strong. The European Union and other countries have been endowed for some time with policies that favour and encourage this transition, but to date little has been done. This transition must necessarily also involve the primary sector, which is often pointed out as one of the main sources of environmental pollution. In this Ph.D thesis, we want to analyse how these two concepts, circular economy and sustainability are dealt with in the agricultural sector and, in particular, in the dairy sheep farming sector. In Chapter I, we focused on the concept of circular economy (CE), estimating the degree of circularity of the economy of the 27 European countries. We found that the level of circularity into the EU economic system is pretty low, equal to 4.1%, with significant differences between the various countries. The primary sector had a predominant role in determining circularity: 80.5% of recycled materials are part of this sector. Chapter II analyzes a particular aspect of sustainability, represented by the ecosystem and social services deriving from Sardinian dairy sheep farming, focusing on their perception. The results highlight the recognition of the multifunctional role of sheep farming by part of population even if some services are perceived as more important than others (enhancing cultural identity of Sardinia and safeguard of typical landscape). Furthermore, we found that if a service is attributed as relevant also the other services tend to be important in the population view. The Chapter III aims to highlight the type of relationship that links economic and environmental sustainability dimensions in dairy sheep farming and if these could be influenced by some farms' structural or socio-demographic variables of farmers. The results arisen from the application of the trade-off analysis showed, firstly, the presence of a slight synergy between the two sustainability dimensions; secondly, highlight that the economic dimensions are positively and significantly influenced by the young age of the farmer and by the application of organic practices.