Around the economic sustainability of italian viticulture: Do farm strategies tackle income risks?

Due to the increasing price and income volatility that affect the agricultural sector, nowadays the reformed CAP 2014-2020 puts new emphasis on risk management in agriculture, especially to cope farmer income risk, with the introduction of the new income stabilization tool (IST). Althought it has been applied in Italy, still any experience exists. In order to contribute to the growing debate around the feasibility of IST implementation, this paper aims at investigating factors that affect the probability of income loss for italian farms specialised in viticulture. The analysis consideres the farm value added to measure income volatility and, in particular, it focuses on some strategies that are commonly adopted by farmers as sef-coping tools. Results show that such strategies do not reduce income risk actually as they merely increase farm productivity. It follows that the adoption of specific risk management tools as IST can represent a possible solution. © 2017, SRAC - Societatea Romana Pentru Asigurarea Calitatii. All rights reserved.