15th AIEAA Conference - Rome, 10-12 June 2026

Global agri-food value chains in a changing geopolitical order: towards new equilibria?

Global agri-food systems are undergoing profound and overlapping transformations. Shifting alliances, regional conflicts, great-power competition, and disruptions such as the US-China trade war, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, increased energy insecurity, and weakened multilateralism are constantly redesigning international economic relations. Recent crises, including the war in Ukraine, tensions in the Indo-Pacific, and shifts in US foreign policy, have further fragmented the global order, prompting governments and firms to reassess how production networks are organized.

Trade has increasingly become an instrument of geopolitical strategy: flows of goods and capital are now shaped as much by national security and political alignment as by efficiency. Geopolitical realignments, climate change, rising input and energy costs, and export restrictions have increased market volatility and exposed structural vulnerabilities along food supply chains. Recent crises, including the war-induced collapse of Black Sea export routes and the emergence of new European Solidarity Lanes, have demonstrated how disruptions propagate through trade networks and reshape global welfare, food security, and agricultural markets. These shocks highlight how deeply interlinked food systems have become, and how conflict, sanctions, trade disputes, and shifts in major power strategies can reverberate across interconnected markets.

Geopolitical shocks do not affect food systems uniformly: their impacts are transmitted through complex intersectoral and regional linkages. For instance, the EU’s policy response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, via sanctions, trade restrictions, and emergency market measures, has generated significant direct and indirect effects across Italian agri-food sectors, with outcomes varying widely by region, supply-chain position, and degree of import dependence. These dynamics intersect with the accelerating requirements for sustainability and climate change mitigation. The EU and several global partners are developing new regulatory frameworks, ranging from carbon farming to ESG reporting, from climate-related disclosures to value-chain-wide emissions accounting rules. For firms, farmers, and consumers, these evolving requirements reshape incentives, alter competitive landscapes, demand new investments in traceability, compliance, and technological upgrading, and may affect decision-making processes.

In this context, the 15th AIEAA Annual Conference, whose central theme is “Global agri-food value chains in a changing geopolitical order: towards new equilibria?”, invites contributions offering theoretical, empirical, and policy insights on how agri-food value chains are adapting, or should adapt, to these global shocks.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions, with a primary - though not exclusive - focus on the following sub-themes:

• Geopolitics, trade, trade policy, and the restructuring of agri-food systems

• Sustainability standards, certification, and power asymmetries in agri-food GVC governance

• Innovation, digitalisation, and new technologies shaping agri-food systems

• Climate change, natural resource constraints, and long-term transition of agriculture

• Equity, development, and distributional implications of changing agri-food systems structures

• Small and family farming in a changing global agri-food system

• Rural development and food systems structural dynamics

• Coherence and trade-offs among economic, social, and environmental sustainability in the agri-food system

• Consumer behaviour and sustainability of agri-food systems

• Adoption, diffusion and policy for innovation in the agri-food systems

• Policies and tools to support the resilience of agri-food systems.

AIEAA welcomes contributions on the topics above. However, contributions on other agricultural and applied economics topics are also encouraged.