Pastoralism, Biocultural Heritage, Territory, Anthropocene Frictions

Extensive grazing of different animal species and breeds traditionally associates quality productions, biocultural heritage, contributing to the maintenance of biodiversity, the landscape and ecosystem services, while reducing land consumption and hydrogeological risks. In inner regions, the mountains and the islands, the shepherd and his system of knowledge and practices become guardians of fragile territories, attacked by growing phenomena of socio-cultural deconstruction and abandonment. In addition, pastoralism offers a sustainable and autonomous form of work and income, helping to keep mountain areas, often marked by severe depopulation and impoverishment, alive and productive.

Transhumance, in turn, is a particular form of breeding and a system of knowledge-practice, based essentially on the seasonal droving of livestock along migratory routes in the Mediterranean and in the Alps in search of pasture, from the mountains to the plains, from the interior to the coast and back. This particular way of raising simultaneously defines a modality of land use and a modality to know/define spaces and landscapes in many parts of the world (European and non-European) and involves many different animal species (sheep, cows, horses, reindeer, camelids, etc.). It is a practice that provides not only food and other products derived from animals, but also a series of ecosystem services and common goods: a profound maintenance of local spaces, a regeneration of the biodiversity of the territory and of the animal lines bred, the persistence of specific forms of social organization and management of environmental resources that today are usually pointed out as an alternative to the unsustainability of industrial agricultural systems.

In many European regions, researchers have documented the presence of transhumant populations since pre-Roman times: these populations are responsible for having profoundly shaped the European agricultural landscape and for having generated a network of trans-regional and cross-border mobility that is also the basis of the first exchanges between European communities and cultures (Aime - Allovio - Viazzo 2001; Costello - Svensson 2018). At the same time, this practice has given rise to a powerful grammar of spaces, with its logics, rules, tenses, and interactions in which “traces (are) similar to words or punctuation” (Ingold and Vergunst 2008: 9; Palladino 2017; Bindi 2020).

More recently, sheep, cattle, and other types of farming have been transformed or influenced by processes of modernization, mechanization, and intensive milk/meat/wool production (Arhem 1984; Aronson 1980; Asad 1970; Ingold 1990; Nori & Scoones 2019; Salzman & Galaty 1990; Schlee 1989; Scoones 1995; Viazzo 1989). This has generated uncertainty, discontinuity and change in practices, a different form of knowledge transfer and a great socioeconomic transformation. However, in many European countries, extensive grazing still exists as an efficient form of agriculture that profoundly shapes the landscape, preserves biodiversity, protects vernacular architecture and traditional social structures. Added to this set of knowledge and practices is a crucial sense of inter-specific coexistence, which transforms traditional pastoral activity into a precious opportunity to reconsider the relationship between culture and nature, between man and animal.

Although the products of extensive grazing are increasingly appreciated for their quality, respect for the environment, the landscape and animal welfare, for environmental and economic sustainability, the sector is currently exposed to a serious numerical loss, registering a notorious reduction of companies and little generational change. For this reason, it is increasingly necessary to support the sector, helping herders in technological innovation processes, in the organization and optimization of production processes, in social innovation and the generation of new economies, as well as in the adequate management of ecosystems safeguarding cultural identity.

Contemporary extensive grazing spaces appear, in a way, as "friction areas" (Tsing 2005, 2013, 2015). On the one hand, in fact, modern intensive agro-industry and the trend towards "extractivist" agri-food production have led to the growing abandonment and/or improper use of pastures, on the other they have radically transformed production conditions and human-human interactions. animal, typical of extensive grazing, the moral economies of agriculture according to tradition and in harmony with the surroundings and landscapes.

Therefore, it is increasingly appropriate to make the younger generations and people living far from rural areas aware of the usefulness and value of extensive and traditional grazing: create a new professional awareness, open new opportunities in the agri-food sector, but also to improve grazing as a way to preserve and protect local landscapes.

At the same time, a new look at pastoralism implies a reflection on the growing multifunctionality of farms, but also on the protection and shared management of civic and community uses, on the recovery of walls, supplies and rest areas and preparation for herds. (stazzi) present along the pastoral routes (tratturi).