Abstract
Rural areas still suffer from a lack of sustainable development, and the diversification of farms may be a step in the right direction. The paper provides a detailed picture of the diversification of Sicilian farms into tourism services. Specifically, we propose a simple indicator of localization intensity of agritourism farms and explore their spatial distribution at municipality level. Our study highlights that Sicilian farms rarely diversify into tourism services, despite being situated in attractive areas. That said, some significant spatial clusters of municipalities where agritourism farms are highly concentrated do emerge from the study.
Highlights
In the 1950s, agricultural innovation was oriented to increase production in response to global food demand
Diversification of farms may be a potential pathway of sustainable rural development
European policies have been addressing this issue for at least two decades, and tourism seems to be the most promising sector for the diversification of rural farms. This could especially be an opportunity for rural areas in regions, like Sicily, which are lagging
Summary
In the 1950s, agricultural innovation was oriented to increase production in response to global food demand. Agriculture Policy (CAP) to adopt innovations which favored an intensive exploitation of natural resources [1] This strategy negatively influenced the conservation of bio-diversity and placed rural farms under the control of the Large-Scale Distribution (LSD) of produce. Diversification of farms is a potential way forward in sustainable rural development [4,5,6,7] by extending the boundaries of agriculture to other related industries like tourism and cultural services, as well as transforming agricultural economies into bio-economies [1] This view implies that, “The agriculture of the future must necessarily be multifunctional, i.e., it must have the ability to produce other non-food goods and services, of public or collective interest, in addition to food. Our results may represent a useful support for regional and local policy makers by extending the information set needed to plan rural policies more effectively
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