Integrating extensive beef production into the agro-food chain. (Special Issue: Food industry and food chains in a challenging world.)

摘要

Agricultural outputs are immersed in a context of change characterised by an evolution from the quantity to the quality in accordance with consumer demand. Among the different productions, beef has been one of the more affected goods due to the confluence of different factors, such as the high international competition, the existing surpluses in the European Union, food crisis, such as BSE, and more recently, those aspects related to animal welfare and the environment. Integrating quality beef into the food chain, particularly the one coming from extensive breeding systems, shows up different aspects that are insufficiently well known, both from the point of view of the production as well as from the demand. This article tries to identify such factors in order to get a better integration of this kind of production into the food chain, by applying Delphi Technique, in order to summarise and present the information given by different actors, such as farmers, consumers, policy makers and administrative institutions. Results show a high consensus for the need to keep on working in the differentiation of the product as well as to improve the information and promotion of this product, being production costs or even the price, which is not so decisive in this case.