Drivers of farmers' adoption and continuation of climate-smart agricultural practices. A study from northeastern Italy.

The EU rural development policy has addressed challenges related to climate change in agriculture by introducing public voluntary schemes, which financially support the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Several factors, most of which are non-financial ones, drive adoption and continuation of these schemes by farmers. Despite the importance of these factors, only a few studies explore their role in the European context. This paper contributes to filling this gap from a twofold perspective. First, it investigates the role of the farming factors, technology accessibility, environmental features, policy design and social expertise at the territorial level on early adoption. Second, it sheds light on farmers' attitudes and motivations and on social pressure on their decision to continue or discontinue the practices, by surveying a sample of early adopters. Three schemes for the Veneto region rural development programme are considered: no-tillage, fertiliser reduction, and water and fertiliser reduction. The results highlight that non-financial factors should be considered in order to design more effective schemes to prompt farmers to adopt and continue such practices over the long run. The paper also stresses the need to complement financial support with proactive information-based instruments.

Urban green spaces activities: A preparatory groundwork for a safety management system.

INTRODUCTION: Urban green spaces works and maintenance are high-risk activities and usually represent possible sources of injuries. The management issues are complex and strongly influenced by companies' policies in terms of safety management and human factor. A high number of tasks-including protecting public health and safety and safe working procedures-need to be faced by professional arborists or gardeners. METHOD: The present paper provides a preparatory groundwork for modeling and describing the real risk levels during the abovementioned activities. The methodology represents a useful tool for decision making both for group leaders and safety coordinators. This goal is reached by collecting data emerging from several workplaces located in North East Italy regarding the frequency and severity of injuries. RESULTS: The preliminary results point out that the most frequent injuries in green maintenance activities are represented by cuts, contusions, and ocular lesions, but none of them have lead to particularly serious consequences for the operators; indeed, the high levels of severity are related to traumas, fractures, and acute lumbar herniated discs. The riskiest activities are related to pruning, especially using mobile elevating work platforms, and grass cutting, especially when operated in escarpments and banks. Workers' behavior and companies' safety policies are key elements for a correct safety management system.