Sustainable Management in Small/Medium Scale Animal Farms

It is a great pleasure to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on Sustainable management in small/medium scale animal farms. Sound and sustainable management of small/medium scale farms is of paramount importance in a globalized and competitive scenario. Sustainable management can be achieved through a circular economy approach, which affects various dimensions of farming activity. Therefore, in order to cope with high complexity, “One Health” approaches may be effective, as they consider the environment, animals, and humans as elements of an interconnected eco-system. Such an important change involves a radical transformation of current management models. The single entrepreneur must address the challenges associated with the transition from a linear to a circular system, since the complexity of food systems requires a holistic and coordinated approach. This requires taking into account the interrelated dimensions of a sustainable management approach: economic, social, and environmental. The purpose of this Special Issue is to explore various dimensions of sustainability related to managing animal farms. Therefore, manuscripts from various disciplines are welcome, both from a theoretical and empirical perspective.

Topics

Economics sustainability

- Precision farming tools to boost sustainable management;

- Multifunctional animal farming: commodity and noncommodity output;

- Circular economy models to reduce costs in animal farming;

- Precision feeding strategies.

Social sustainability

- Social inclusion in animal farming;

- Animal welfare as an attribute is receiving increasing attention from citizens;

- Improving networking between different operators in the agro-food supply chain;

- Relaunching of rural areas.

Environmental sustainability

- Organic animal farming;

- Pest management in animal farming;

- The use of by-products to reduce the environmental impact of animal feed;

- The custody of landscapes suffering from hydrogeological instability.

Prof. Felice Adinolfi
Prof. Marcello De Rosa
Prof. Jorgelina Di Pasquale
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.