Ethics approach in food choices along the agri-food supply chain: a survey in Apulia region

Food issues as increased prices and prices volatility, resources scarcity and climate change, are more and more emerging in today’s fast moving global marketplace. In this scenario, understanding the dynamics of the agri-food chain is a crucial driver in order to tackle rapid and fast-spreading challenges related to the food products and their knowledge. Moreover, an increasing distance between production and consumption determined the need of acquiring knowledge and others determinants on food products. Nevertheless it is important to underline the relation between food ethics and innovation process (new technologies to production or management practices) whether the latter helps and boosts the development of the agri-food supply chain. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the link between food and ethics under several perspectives in the supply chain in order to understand how ethical issues may be traced to the analysis the agri-food supply chain and how innovative food processes assess potential effects on the agri-food stakeholders. Agricultural ethics was being envisioned as an interdisciplinary sub-discipline that nowadays should become a significant basis to analyze norms and values being implicitly assumed by agricultural researchers, practitioners and policy makers assessing ethical and societal values equal to the economic concerns of production and consumption (Thompson, 2014; Thompson et al., 1991; Navin, 2014). Several works and policies are on the role of ethics including health, quality, trust, environmental welfare aspects in influencing consumer behavior (Grunert, 2005; Krystallis et al., 2012; OECD, 2008; Young et al., 2010). Making use of a qualitative survey administrated to main actors involved in a supply chain the ethics approach is analyzed in food choices along the agri-food supply, whether consumer rely on trust and labeling practices, or whether producer foster the participation in innovation process and spread knowledge along the chain. Results corroborate the importance to build a fair and healthy food system for people and the environment. The paper is structured as follows: after a literature review on food and ethics, the present situation is described, especially ethical aspects, of the supply chain of wine in Apulia region in Southern Italy. Then, methodology is presented; an exploratory survey is carried out on two main steps of a supply chain: producers and consumers. Findings highlight that consumers choices are affected by some ethical motivation and also that wine producers increasingly shifted attention on sustainable practices and innovative methods to meet ethical issues. Finally conclusions are drawn.