In a business landscape increasingly oriented towards sustainability, the importance of training, corporate culture and the adoption of sustainable practices becomes crucial for the growth and future of companies. In this interview, we explore these key themes through the experience and perspectives of Maria Chiara Ferrarese, CSQA General Manager, an expert in agri-food and certification systems applicable to the sector, as well as a professor of the Master in “Food Quality and Safety” at the University of Padua.
Ferrarese guides us through trends and opportunities, indicating the most effective levers to encourage companies to adopt more sustainable practices and also taking into consideration the wine sector.
Over the last 30 years, the agri-food sector has been the protagonist of a constant process of innovation that has allowed the guarantee of food safety to evolve by associating it with the concepts of quality and, more recently, sustainability. Steps based on the growing awareness of the value of agri-food production, consumer needs and market needs.
An awareness that has been progressively acquired thanks to the implementation of new production rules introduced partly by the legislator and partly by voluntary standardization, as technical support to the decision-making process.
In this context, professional and corporate training has assumed a central role over the years in transferring the knowledge and skills needed to best face the challenges that have arisen.
Today, to address the issue of sustainability , training plays an even more important role than in the past because it requires skills in different areas such as social, environmental, economic, as well as an approach that is not only corporate, but also supply chain. It is also a topic that affects different processes and different corporate functions: ownership, marketing, research and development, purchasing, production, logistics, plant engineering, etc. Not only do we need different skills, but also a teamwork methodology and effective communication.
To govern change and effectively address the challenge of sustainability, a new approach is needed in defining strategies, managing projects and translating them into concrete and synergic actions in the company. All personnel must be trained not only on the guiding principles of sustainability, but above all on company strategies and their operational implementation in the various work areas. In this sense, the sustainability strategy that the company intends to adopt cannot ignore a widespread personnel training strategy.
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The wine sector is undoubtedly one of the sectors that has worked the most and best in the field of sustainability, with a strategic vision and with the aim of harmonizing the concept and application in the sector to present itself to the market in the most unitary way possible.
The fact that the majority of wines are Geographical Indications has helped a lot in this path, since there are Consortia for the protection and FederDoc which has a very representative governance. The sector has succeeded, with great foresight and proactivity, in defining a sustainability standard applicable to products, companies and also territories.
This is the Equalitas standard strongly desired by the Italian quality wine sector and recognized internationally by several important stakeholders. It is a successful project to define a national standard that was created by producers, for producers, calibrated to the Italian reality. A winning, innovative model that perhaps for the first time has allowed the sector to "not suffer" international standards as happened for food safety with BRCGS / IFS.
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Source: Wine Meridian