Fornendo energia e nutrienti, la produzione di cibo è essenziale per la vita. Tuttavia, essa rappresenta anche una criticità ambientale. La popolazione mondiale in rapida crescita, infatti, ha bisogno di un quantitativo di cibo sempre maggiore, una delle principali cause di degrado ambientale a livello globale. Il sistema agricolo è fondato su una rete di relazioni complesse che collegano la produzione agricola, funzioni e condizioni ambientali. Una produzione agricola meno impattante è, quindi, fondamentale per non compromettere la possibilità per la future generazioni di avere accesso a un quantitativo adeguato di risorse. La metodologia LCA (life cycle assessment) ha un ruolo centrale nella valutazione di sostenibilità. Analizzando l’intero ciclo di vita di un prodotto o servizio, infatti, permette di tenere in considerazione eventuali trasferimenti di impatti tra comparti ambientali o fai della filiera. Il principale obiettivo della presente tesi è contribuire al dibattito in corso riguardo all’armonizzazione degli approcci nell’applicazione della metodologia LCA a prodotti agro-alimentari per favorirne l’affidabilità e l’efficacia. / Providing energy and nutrients, food production is essential for life. However it represents also an important environmental concern. Indeed, the rapidly growing world population is requiring an increased food production which is one of the greatest causes of environmental degradation throughout the world. The agricultural system is based on complex relations that link agricultural productivity, environmental functions and environmental conditions. Therefore, moving towards less polluting production systems is of the utmost importance to satisfy the current demand for food without compromising the possibility for future generations to have access to a proper amount of food of adequate quality. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is at the core of sustainability assessment. Indeed, considering the entire life cycle of a product or service, it allows to account for potential shifts of environmental impacts between environmental compartments or stages of the food supply chain. The overall aim of the present thesis is to contribute to the ongoing debate on the harmonisation of the approaches to carry out a LCA referred to agro-food products in order to foster its reliability and effectiveness.

The emergence of the effects of global warming, as well as the ongoing depletion of fossil fuels and fertile soil pose a serious threat for the future of the agricultural industry. Alternatively, the continuous population growth mainly in the less developed regions highlights the future need of approximately 70-110 percent increase in the overall output of contemporary food production. While the current conventional agriculture deploys a multitude of technologies including the precision agriculture framework, the future needs of the population exceed the projected capabilities of the industry. Machine learning as the current fastest growing technology represents the potential remedy for the emerging issues, yet the extent of successful implementation remains uncertain. The thesis aims to uncover the potential future implications of implementation of machine learning based technology in agriculture through the use of the new scenario building methodology. The analysis builds on a varying set of empirical data, current state of art projects in machine learning and multiple future trend projections. Albeit the scenario building technique allows for a potentially endless number of constructed scenarios, the thesis concentrates on three main plot lines. First scenario tackles the more probable...

As the 1960s Environmental movement has grown, sustainability and justice discourses have come to the fore of the movement. While environmental justice discourse considers the unequal effects of environmental burdens, the language that frames "sustainability" is often socially and politically neutral. This thesis critically examines sustainability initiatives and practices of an urban farming organization in Florida. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2017, I explore the extent to which these initiatives incorporate race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic class when working to provide sustainably grown food in diverse communities. I argue that the organization's focus on justice for the environment, rather than for communities, and education as a barrier in low-income, food desert neighborhoods neglects to integrate experiences of those living on the margins into their initiatives. This research raises awareness of the need for a critical examination of sustainability in practice and a politically aware incorporation of environmental justice themes into sustainability agendas.