Economic assessment of cereal straw management in sicily

The cereal sector plays a very significant socio-economic role in various areas of the Mediterranean because it generates income and employment both up and downstream of each crop cultivation. Considering the growing interest of the scientific world in agro-environmental themes and the green economy, apart the products by agro-food industry, cereals in particular, as well as their by-products need evaluating. However, for businessmen to re-use virtuously these by-products they must be motivated by environmental issues and perhaps even more by economic ones. So, several profit scenarios have been devised regarding cereal straw harvesting and management, starting from face-to-face surveys to define the current status quo. The results show that, currently, most farms work in break-even and they harvest the straw to safeguard the land and prevent it being illegally burned in the fields. The different scenarios achieved by sensitivity analyses show that the only farms who would keep positive profits, whatever the rise in costs, are those who have the straw harvested into large rectangular bales by sub-contractors.