Specialisation, Fragmentation, and Income Instability in Emerging Hop Production Systems: Microeconomic Evidence from Italian Farms

The growth of the Italian craft beer sector has renewed interest in domestic hop cultivation, presenting a promising opportunity for farm diversification, despite challenges such as structural fragmentation and limited economic data. The study examines the structural and economic characteristics of Italian hop farms using harmonised microdata from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) for the years 2021 to 2023. The sample includes 13 farms (selected from an initial sample of 14 after outlier detection) with 32 validated farm-year observations, representing approximately 19% of Italy’s total hop-growing area. A multivariate analysis—combining Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and fuzzy C-means clustering—was performed using five key economic indicators: gross margin (GM), variable costs (VCs), hop production (Q_HOP), specialisation ratio (SH), and the coefficient of variation in the gross margin (GM_cv) as a proxy for income stability. The results identify three distinct farm profiles: (i) resilient specialised farms with high margins but significant income volatility; (ii) intermediate emerging farms; and (iii) diversified units where hops represent a secondary crop. The findings of this study provide an in-depth understanding of the economic strategies underpinning hop cultivation in Italy, which may be of interest to all organisations where hops are grown as an alternative crop. They offer concrete guidelines to policymakers to support the sector’s development through targeted measures that address issues relating to farm size, technical capabilities, and supply chain integration.