Abstract
The Garfagnana region of Tuscany has witnessed a resurgence in the small-scale farming sector. Rooted in a historical practice of multifunctional agriculture, over the last decade family farmers and local institutions have increasingly focused on place-based development initiatives, such as revalorizing native livestock breeds and promoting agroecological practices, as ways to strengthen small-scale agriculture and the local rural economy. This place-based turn is now reshaping the development trajectories of many family farms and communities in Garfagnana. Drawing on qualitative field research conducted in 2015, this paper utilizes the sociological conceptual lenses of multifunctional agriculture and place-based development to analyze three case-study farms, each with different production systems and territorial relations. Multifunctional agriculture theory is used to analyze how farming practices in the three case-studies represent a range of adaptive shifts away from productionist trends and toward a more diversified farming approach. Then place-based theory is used to demonstrate how these multifunctional agriculture practices relate to the distinct socio-ecological landscape of Garfagnana, uniquely rooting these farms in the territory. This article ultimately examines how new forms of multifunctional agriculture are fostering a place-based food and agriculture system in central Italy and how this approach can strengthen family farming and rural communities. See the press release for this article.
Highlights
The Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany, located between the Apuan Alps and the Apennine mountain ranges of central Italy, has witnessed a resurgence of the small-scale family farming sector.1 Despite the general trend in Italy of rural abandonment and agricultural concentration since the 1980s, much of the farming sector in Garfagnana continues to be oriented toward small-scale production
Analyzing the farming practices and place-based relations of Maestà della Formica, Azienda Agricola Cerasa, and Societa’ Agricola Filippi, this paper argues that these three case-studies represent different forms of multifunctional agriculture on the spectrum of Wilson’s theory (2008)
It is important to note that local institutions are a moderate or important factor in the farms demonstrating the most strongly multifunctional and place-based characteristics (Maestà della Formica and Azienda Agricola Cerasa), which raises important questions for future research on the role(s) of local institutions in facilitating placebased development
Summary
The Garfagnana region of northern Tuscany, located between the Apuan Alps and the Apennine mountain ranges of central Italy, has witnessed a resurgence of the small-scale family farming sector. Despite the general trend in Italy (and, more broadly, in Europe) of rural abandonment and agricultural concentration since the 1980s, much of the farming sector in Garfagnana continues to be oriented toward small-scale production. Despite the general trend in Italy (and, more broadly, in Europe) of rural abandonment and agricultural concentration since the 1980s, much of the farming sector in Garfagnana continues to be oriented toward small-scale production. This development trajectory is a result (in part) of efforts by local farmers and institutions both to strengthen historically rooted agricultural practices and values and adapt these practices to new socio-economic and environmental dynamics in the territory (Camilli & Pieroni, 2016; Rovai & Andreoli, 2016). Building on past research on the multifunctional nature of the Garfagnana farming sector, this paper argues that multifunctional agriculture in Garfagnana is increasingly taking a place-based turn, which is reshaping the development trajectories of many family farms and communities in the territory
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