How did Italian diversified farms tackle Covid-19 pandemic first wave challenges?

The spread of the Covid-19 pandemic in Italy, in the period March–May 2020, quickly triggered a deep crisis, causing an immediate economic slowdown and consequently a strong contraction in domestic demand and trade. The food supply chain faced severe difficulties, although its anti-cyclical nature allowed for greater resilience compared to other economic sectors. In this framework of ongoing uncertainty, it is important to understand the response of farms to the crisis, and their role in the sustainability of the post-pandemic food supply chain, even for future policy interventions in the short and medium term. The purpose of the paper is to investigate how diversification affected the response of farms to the Covid-19 crisis, and explore whether the changes required by the post-crisis scenario can produce opportunities for their activities. The study investigates a sample of fifteen farms in central Italy through semi-structured interviews, performing a lexicon-based text and sentiment analysis. The results highlight the importance of farm diversification in dealing with the Covid-19 crisis, and emphasise the role of diversified farms for the sustainability of the agri-food system. These results have interesting policy implications, particularly regarding support for the competitiveness of farms by improving sustainable logistics, electronic commerce and exchanges of knowledge and innovations among farmers; these measures should be taken into account to target the future agricultural, rural and food policies, at both national and local level. •The first Covid-19 pandemic wave in March–May 2020 strongly hit the Italian food supply chain.•A direct survey on 15 diversified farms was carried out, through semi-structured interviews.•Text and sentiment analysis were applied to understand how farmers tackled the challenges of the crisis period.•Results stress the importance of farm diversification during the pandemic wave.•Policy interventions to reinforce competitiveness are needed to overcome the crisis.