For a very long time, agricultural policy has been interested only in productive or economic aspects. Nevertheless, interventions aiming to support farmers' income or to promote agricultural: modernisation have resulted in several 'negative' side-effects, such as increasing pollution, landscape depletion and deepening of regional disparities. Consequently, a need has emerged for confronting problems with a more comprehensive approach, taking into account the whole range of impacts caused by agriculture. The European Concerted Action on 'Landscape and Nature Production Capacity of Sustainable/Organic Farms' has proposed a checklist of criteria for sustainable landscape management. This article discusses procedures for summarising the above-mentioned criteria in an 'overall judgement'. The aim is to provide a tool capable to assess farm performance taking into account all the relevant impacts of farm activities. Firstly, the paper discusses issues related to information quality, focussing on the differences in procedures for processing quantitative and qualitative data. Secondly, the article analyses methods suitable for reaching an overall judgement based on several criteria. Thereafter, it discusses their application to a set of case study farms or to farm typologies, which can be obtained by processing data from statistics or ad hoc surveys. Advantages and drawbacks of the use of case studies and farm typologies are given while their integrated use is recommended. Two types of methodologies are presented. The first methodology, to be preferred if time, information or financial resources are not lacking, transforms initial information into Utility values and processes the latter by using more sophisticated techniques, such as multiple criteria analysis. The second uses a simplified: approach, transforming initial data on the base of quartiles and then summing them up without any weighting. The advantages of this method are an easy implementation and a methodology that can be understood by decision-makers and administrators, who do not have a background in statistics. Conclusions stress the importance of a more comprehensive approach in setting agricultural policies, since fanning activity influences landscape and environment quality besides other important features. From this viewpoint, decision-makers have to be able to foresee the whole range of effects induced from policy, to avoid 'unexpected side-effects'. Regarding Landscape Management, interventions aiming to promote the introduction or reintroduction of single landscape elements can give different results from those that were expected. Consequently, subsidising farm typologies or styles of farming that have been proved to have a positive effect on landscape could be a more reliable approach. Farm typologies or styles of farming to be promoted could be selected on the base of their 'social' performance, assessed according to a multi-dimensional approach as the one presented in this article. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

Post-war development-characterized by intensive processes of urbanization, concentration of agriculture on the most fertile lands, and abandonment of mountainous and marginal areas-brought about negative environmental and socio-economic consequences. They have been particularly severe in terms of increase of hydrogeological risk, which is high in most Italian regions. Over time, there has been an increasing awareness of the multiple functions played by agriculture in terms of provision of Ecosystem Services (ES), which contribute fundamentally to human well-being. In particular, some ES provided by farmers may help to reduce the hydrogeological risk of territories prone to landslides and floods. In this framework, the paper presents as a case study the project "Farmers as Custodians of a Territory." This project was implemented in the Serchio River basin, Tuscany (Italy), and combines a multifunctional farm strategy of diversification with the provision of Ecosystem Services related to the hydraulic and hydrogeological protection of the river-basin territory. Although this case study should be read within the framework of the theories of agricultural multifunctionality and ES provision, it nevertheless took a very pragmatic and innovative approach, which differentiates it from most of the case studies given in the literature. Results of our analysis show that, by involving farmers as custodians of the territory, it is possible to reach a "win-win" solution characterized, on the one hand, by better services for the community at a lower cost for the Land Reclamation Consortia involved with hydrogeological risk prevention, thus improving the effectiveness and efficiency of ES provision; and on the other hand, by improving the economic situation and survival chances of local farms.

There is a growing interest on landscape and landscape policy and planning, especially since the adoption of the European Landscape Convention in 2000. This latter defines landscape as "an area, as perceived by people, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/or human factors". In the case of rural landscape, this means that an appropriate governance model should not only involve local stakeholders in a participative approach, but also take into account natural characteristics, cultural aspects of the past and present, and socio-economic aspects, since agriculture is the main driver of change for rural landscapes. Farm strategies are influenced by internal and by external factors, these latter being related to market conditions and to constraints and opportunities given by policies. Market globalization and Agricultural policies are consequently having a strong impact on landscape, that public institutions try to neutralise setting rules about landscape conservation. Thus, due to its specific features, landscape is impacted both by several sectorial and territorial policies which have none or very low coordination among them. Indeed, Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has often shown a negative influence on landscape, also in the case of Agri-Environmental Schemes (AES) intended to promote landscape. In this framework, the aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive model for the governance of rural landscape and a first simplified application to a cultural landscape. This model is based on the integration of a geographical multi-criteria analysis, an advanced GIS-based geo-processing tools, and participatory techniques aiming to understand and foresee local stakeholders' behaviours through focus-groups and dedicated interviews. The identification of future landscape scenarios is based on the integration of past evolution (historical analysis), landscape sensitivity (territorial analysis) and farmers' adaptation to market and policy changes (farm analysis). A simplified version of the model was tailored and tested in the municipality of Castiglione d'Orcia of the Siena province in Tuscany, Italy, one of the UNESCO cultural landscapes, but is the Authors' opinion that its approach

Aim Individual placement and support (IPS) has a considerable body of evidence for its effectiveness in helping people with mental disorder to achieve and maintain competitive jobs. However, little data in young adult populations are currently available, especially in Europe. Aim of this study was to assess the effect of IPS in Italian young adults with moderate‐to‐severe mental illness, examining the main competitive employment outcomes and drop out rates during a 3‐year follow‐up period. Methods Participants (n = 54) were recruited from patients receiving psychiatric treatment in one of the seven adult Community Mental Health Centers of the Reggio Emilia Department of Mental Health. Together with drop out rates, we investigated job duration (total number of days worked), job acquisition (employment in the labour market for at least 1 day during the follow‐up), total hours per week worked, and job tenure (weeks worked on the longest‐held competitive job). Results A crude competitive employment rate of 40.7% and a crude drop out rate of 22.2% over the 3‐year follow‐up period were found. However, 66% of 42 clients who remained in the program over 3 years gained competitive employment at some time during the 3‐year period. Conclusions This research shows the feasibility of an IPS intervention model in the public mental health care system in Italy, especially for a young adult target population.

The lack of financial resources and the constraints about interventions are threatening the survival of built heritage and the multiple benefits it can provide. In time, the role of building conservation has changed from preservation to being part of a sustainable strategy where adaptive reuse may allow to protect built heritage, while promoting it as a resource. This paper presents the results of a multicriteria analysis applied to the case study of Certosa di Pisa in Calci (Tuscany), a former Carthusian Monastery currently run as a publicly owned museum center. Based on information gathered from literature and the involvement of the two main stakeholders, a SWOT analysis was performed to identify three scenarios in which new functions were introduced with the aim to cover restoration and maintenance costs. Scenarios were compared by using a participatory MCA, taking into account not only economic performances but also cultural, territorial integration and restoration co-impacts. Results show that it is possible to reach economic sustainability while conserving heritage values, but several criticalities may hinder the process. Conclusions discuss the suitability of the method in identifying sustainable reuse solutions and highlight the role of governance bodies and the problems related to their public and/or private composition.