Some thoughts about my recent attendance at the conference “Economics and Politics of Migration: Implications for Agriculture and Food”, held in Piacenza (Italy) last 15-16th of June. During the event I gave visibility to Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, presenting my project "CONSUMEHealth" with a poster presentation.
The conference was organized by the Italian Association for Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA) and aimed at providing a scientific contribution and promoting a critical debate on the effects of immigration on economics and policy implications in rural areas. The interaction between migration and poverty is still among the least studied topics in agricultural economics. For example, in destination countries, immigrants will contribute to change consumption patterns as well as food habits, by opening shops, restaurants and trade activities. These topics have been discussed with many experts, among which Anna Maria Mayda of Georgetown University (USA) and Giuseppe De Arcangelis of University La Sapienza (Italy).
Apart from this topic, over 100 researchers from Italy and abroad gave presentations in many sessions about climate change, sustainability, policy perspectives on regional and international agricultural markets, food security, agri-food frauds, etc. Personally, I gave a talk in a session on "Consumer choice" with other fellow researchers: Roberta Raffaelli of the University of Trento, Leonardo Cei of the University of Florence and Aynur Mammadova of the University of Padova. The panel took into consideration several aspects of the recent studies on consumer choice, both from methodological and content perspective, as well as the role of disentangling the effects of asking the indirect questions in choice experiment (Raffaelli), consumer preferences for private health-related and public environmentally friendly food attributes (Cei) and explored responsibilities and potentialities in green marketing of the Italian leather industry (Mammadova). Finally, I presented the results of a recent study about the role of food neophobia in determining the willingness to eat insect-based products.
Some contributions can be downloaded from the AgEconSearch website while other will be published in a special issue of the journal of Bio-based and Applied Economics (BAE).