Rural development and agro-energy supply chain. An application of enterprise input-output modelling supported by GIS

Policy makers and researchers have largely discussed about how the economic development of rural areas, highly characterized by food-oriented agriculture, can be promoted and sustained. The increasing attention to the environmental and energy problems affecting the current economic and social scenario is creating new development opportunities for these rural areas. In particular, transforming biomasses in energy is considered as an interesting and effective opportunity for favouring and enhancing their development. However, the geographical dispersion of farms can strongly affect the contribution of such an opportunity, mainly because of logistics issues. Environmental aspects also need to be considered for a suitable evaluation of the sustainable development of a rural area. In the paper an enterprise input-output model supported by GIS technology is developed for the analysis of agro-energy supply chains. The supply chain is described as a network of processes, where all inputs and outputs are geographically referred through the GIS technology. Referring to a given rural area, the model can be adopted to compute the flows of materials and energy among the different processes and to evaluate the economic and environmental impact of the whole supply chain for the same rural area. Finally, a case study related to a rural area is considered and the design and development of an agro-energy supply chain is analysed, adopting the proposed model.