Unlocking New Opportunities for Spatial Analysis of Farms’ Income and Business Activities in Italy: The Agricultural Regions in Shapefile Format

Sara Quaresima, Pasquale Nino, Concetta Cardillo and Arianna Di Paola ()
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Sara Quaresima: Institute for BioEconomy (IBE), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), 00185 Rome, Italy
Pasquale Nino: CREA Research Centre for Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy, 00198 Rome, Italy
Concetta Cardillo: CREA Research Centre for Agricultural Policies and Bioeconomy, 00198 Rome, Italy
Arianna Di Paola: Institute for BioEconomy (IBE), National Research Council of Italy (CNR), 00185 Rome, Italy

Data, 2024, vol. 9, issue 12, 1-12

Abstract: Italy is divided into 773 Agricultural Regions (ARs) based on shared physical and agronomic characteristics. These regions offer a valuable tool for analyzing various geographical, socio-economic, and environmental aspects of agriculture, including the climate. However, the ARs have lacked geospatial data, limiting their analytical potential. This study introduces the “Italian ARs Dataset”, a georeferenced shapefile defining the boundaries of each AR. This dataset facilitates geographical assessments of Italy’s complex agricultural sector. It also unlocks the potential for integrating AR data with other datasets like the Farm Accounting Data Network (FADN) dataset, in Italy represented by the Rete di Informazione Contabile Agricola (RICA), which samples hundreds of thousands of farms annually. To demonstrate the dataset’s utility, a large sample of RICA data encompassing 179 irrigated crops from 2011 to 2021, covering all of Italy, was retrieved. Validation confirmed successful assignment of all ARs present in the RICA sample to the corresponding shapefile. Additionally, to encourage the use of the ARs Dataset with gridded data, different spatial-scale resolutions are tested to identify a suitable threshold. The minimal spatial scale identified is 0.11 degrees, a commonly adopted scale by several climate datasets within the EURO-CORDEX and COPERNICUS programs.

Keywords: FADN; RICA; agriculture; GIS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C8 C80 C81 C82 C83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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