Business Legitimacy, Agricultural Biodiversity, and Environmental Ethics: Insights from Sustainable Bakeries

The relationship between biodiversity and ethics is complex and concerns the broader environmental ethics. In the agricultural industry, these issues are fundamental and, in the context of agro-biodiversity, bread production activity plays a primary role. Artisanal bread and its derivatives represent basic food products and a short supply chain, with only one intermediate step between the producer of the raw material (flour) and the consumer, represented by bakery. Furthermore, bakery industry is characterized by different needs, motivations, evaluations, and ethical/moral values, as well as philosophical considerations towards nature, of producers and consumers. Through a multiple case study on four specific companies of the interesting and relevant natural and sustainable bakery industry, our aim is to understand what are the motivations and ethical-moral drives behind specific ideological and operational choices that have an impact on nature and its biodiversity. It is also intended to investigate how the different ethical-philosophical approaches to nature lead to economic and management choices that are also very distant from each other and have different impacts on the protection and promotion of agricultural biodiversity. This study has allowed to place the positions and choices of some entrepreneurs and artisans in the different ethical approaches to nature and therefore to biodiversity. It was also possible to highlight how the different behaviors of consumers and producers arise from the ethical conceptions through which they look at reality and the consequences of their choices on production and sales activities.