Is the choice of a farm’s commercial market an indicator of agricultural intensity? Conventional and short food supply chains in periurban farming systems

Short food supply chains (SFSCs) have been identified both as an economic opportunity for farming systems affected by urbanisation and as drivers of more sustainable farming systems than conventional food supply chains. However, few studies have focused on the intensity of periurban farms that participate in such SFSCs, compared with the performance of the other farms. In this paper, we examined the relationship between agricultural intensity and the market orientation in a representative sample of farms in the urban region of Pisa (Italy). We define ‘agricultural intensity’ as the intensity of land use and its main drivers (e.g. farm management or the individual characteristics of farmers), and ‘market orientation’ as the ratio of farm produce within conventional, short or mixed food-supply chains. The results of the analysis suggest that the market orientation of periurban farming systems is highly correlated to the indicators of farm management and the intensity of land use of farms, more than the individual farmer’s characteristics. This result provides the first evidence that market orientation is a driver of intensity, and that individual farmer’s characteristics are not significantly different in the three groups of market orientation. These findings could be generalised to other urban regions and correlated with the main orientation of farming systems in order to support both the assessment of farming systems and the implementation of innovative urban food policies