From June 18-20, 2025, Luciano Pagano of the Oper8 UNIPI team participated in the 14th Conference of the Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA), held in Pisa, Italy.
The event, themed “Reconciling competitiveness and sustainability in the agrifood system: the role of knowledge and innovation”, was the ideal setting to present our project’s progress.
On this occasion, Luciano presented the paper titled “Cost-benefit analysis of non-chemical weed control practices: an analysis of 20 European case studies”. This research is at the heart of the Oper8 project and addresses one of the most pressing challenges for European agriculture: the transition to low or zero chemical input weed management practices.
The study is based on an in-depth Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) applied to 20 case studies across seven European countries: Spain, France, Italy, Greece, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Latvia. Various innovative practices were examined, grouped into clusters such as mechanical weeding, cover crops, mulching, precision agriculture, and ecological management.
The preliminary results show that while environmental and social impacts are often perceived positively by farmers, economic sustainability is strongly dependent on the local context, the scale of implementation, and the maturity of the adopted innovation.
