The Contribution of Geographical Certification Programs to Farm Income and Rural Economies: The Case of Pecorino Siciliano PDO

Emanuele Schimmenti, Enrico Viola, Cassandra Funsten and Valeria Borsellino
Additional contact information
Emanuele Schimmenti: Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Enrico Viola: Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Cassandra Funsten: Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Valeria Borsellino: Department of Agricultural, Food and Forest Sciences, Università degli Studi di Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-32

Abstract: This study attempts to measure the capacity of the EU geographical certification scheme to positively influence the price of certified products and the incomes of their producers. A comparison of the economic results of two cheese-producing dairy farm enterprises with different business strategies and locations within the Sicilian hinterlands is performed in order to determine the transformation value of each dairy’s sheep milk into pecorino cheese (with and without the Protected Designation of Origin, or PDO, certification) and the related joint products (ricotta). The economic convenience of the total transformation of sheep milk into Pecorino Siciliano PDO and ricotta is also appraised. The results suggest that producing and commercializing Pecorino Siciliano PDO is a promising strategy for differentiating and promoting dairy farm products and improving the financial performance of producers, with foreseeable positive repercussions in the socioeconomically less favored rural areas where they are located.

Keywords: EU Protected Designation of Origin (PDO); cheese; production location; socioeconomic aspects; differentiation strategy; processing cost; value-added; price-cost margin; internal areas; transformation value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1977/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/1977/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:1977-:d:498044

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().