Simone Piras

Simone Piras is a Senior Researcher at the James Hutton Institute, specializing in Agricultural and Rural Economics within the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences department. Their work focuses on decision-making processes in food value chains, rural development, and socio-economic impacts of agricultural practices.

• PhD in Agri-food Economics and Statistics from University of Bologna (2016)
• Visiting researcher at Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), Germany

Research interests span behavioral economics of food waste, rural demographic change, and sustainable agricultural systems. Current projects include:

• H2020 RADIANT: Dynamic value chains for underutilized crops
• UKRI JUSTLANZ: Net-zero transition in UK farming
• RESAS JHI-E1-1: Scottish rural economy scenarios

Past projects involved H2020 FOODLAND (African food security), H2020 LOWINFOOD (food waste reduction), and ESPON ESCAPE (shrinking rural areas). Methodologies include economic experiments, agent-based modeling, and counterfactual analysis.