Existing societal challenges related to food security and safety, the creation of jobs and preservation of European competitiveness, the reduction of the dependence on non-renewable resources, the mitigation and adaptation to climate change and the sustainable management of natural resources have led towards new policy orientations based on the establishment of a bioeconomy in Europe.

At the same time, it is possible to observe a growing consumer attention towards food with reduced negative health and environmental impacts and an increasing role of sustainability as a quality attribute in food evaluations and choices.

These trends raise the issue of the sustainability of economic activities within value chains. Public and private sustainability standards are among the main tools that firms use to implement  sustainable-related rules. The last decades show a proliferation of sustainability standards differing in terms of object of the analysis, agents involved, products targeted, schemes’ owners, legal validity, and level of traceability/complexity of the standard. Such standards are considered effective instruments to reduce market failures related to information, to improve stakeholders reputation and to introduce liability and trust among the agents of the supply chain. Moreover, they are used also as marketing tools for product differentiation.

An in-depth understanding of the market, policy and supply chain drivers and barriers influencing firms decision to implement different standards needs further empirical investigation. Moreover, the adoption of new standards implies firm and supply chain innovation capability and affects the vertical relationships within the value chain, as well as firm’s performances. There is a need for discussing current ideas related to theoretical and managerial approaches useful to  understanding the economic dynamics of different standards.  Moreover, issues on data challenges, reliable measures, and empirical applications to capture the effects of sustainability standards need to be explored.

The objective of the seminar is to improve the understanding of the “wind of change” of sustainability standards and their effects on agricultural, food, and bio-based value chains by bringing together scholars having an interest in both theoretical and empirical research on the subject. Specific objectives are:

1. To provide state of the art of the knowledge concerning the drivers and implications of sustainability standards in the bioeconomy;
2. To discuss drivers and implications of sustainability standards from economic, governance, and policy perspectives;
3. To identify the gaps in the theoretical and empirical understanding of the subject raising the main research questions for future research.