Biofuels supply chains: Sustainability and enterpreneurship in local agricultural systems

The bio-energy is rapidly increasing its relevance in the latest years: Governmental policies, private interests, sustainable development supporters and stakeholders in the environmental activism field, are all working to size the real value and opportunities offered by this market. Investments in bio-energies requires deep and accurate analysis to evaluate their economical feasibility both by the investors’ perspective and by the policy makers’ perspectives. Research should mainly focus on mid-to-long-term effects on the supply chains related to the bio-energy sector and on the effects on local economies interested by such investments. Furthermore local economies can be evenly affected by these new technological plants whose implications on the territory attractiveness and the local agro-food supply chains are largely un-known. In many areas, public support competes with funding for rural development and agro-food firms. Public opinion and policy makers generally agree about the value of agro-energy as tools able to ameliorate the economic conditions of the agricultural entrepreneurs and multifunctional agriculture, and on the environmental foot prints of the related human activities. The available set of indicators to monitor such effects are under-developed, and there is a call to research adequate indexes and methodologies able to grasp the “chain” effects of investments in bio-energy activities. The value net-chain approach offer san adequate perspective for such investigation. The net-chain approach makes it possible to consider the interactional effects among the different stakeholders playing a role in the development of the agroenergy sector. If it is reasonable to believe that investments in green energy have the lowest environmental impact among the actual feasible alternatives, it is also true that few studies consider their indirect effects on the surrounding environment. These effects may affect the attractiveness of the territory, especially in those rural sites that take advantages from investments in multifunctional and tourism-oriented agriculture. Product differentiation strategies in high income economies make large use of the territory as adding-value factor. In many cases, these sites coincide with Local Agro-Food Systems (LAS), is to say aggregations of productive activities that take direct and indirect advantages from sharing common cultural values that, in turn, translate in externalities over the natural and social environment. There is still space to research for adequate and balanced solutions, favoring research on decisional processes stemming out from bottom-up approaches. The chance to attain locally organized supply chains are presumably higher where there is a higher concentration of human, natural and financial capitals. For an harmonic and successful organization of both the exploitation of such capitals and the management of the positive and negative externalities, social capital based on trust and reciprocated relationships is a relevant issue. We investigated the network of relationships underneath the territorial organization of local supply chains that could enhance or hinder the rising of social capital. Results seem to show that site specificities affect the sustainability of biofuels supply chains, and that effects seems to be reciprocally bounded, thus calling for the inclusion of such measures when planning new policies, and for analytical approaches encompassing historical perspectives.