Pastoralismo e filiera lattiero casearia tra continuità e innovazione. Uno studio di caso in Sardegna

This article analyses a local system (the region of Oristano in the Centre-West of Sardinia, Italy) and its most important agri-food chain: the dairy sector. The article contributes to the current debate on the local development in the Southern Italy. We use a structural approach to analyse the social facts as processes linked to the space-time dimension and to the variables of the context (historical, social and institutional ones). First, using quantitative data, we describe the main characteristics of the dairy chain (sheeps and cows); secondly we reconstruct the historical change in the sheep breeding, how shepherds buy the lands and settle along the old transhumance road in this region, keeping a model of extensive sheep farming by the way; third we focus our arguments on the origin and development of cows intensive breeding in stables, from the land reclamation project to the agrarian reform. Then we analyse the organisation and the change in the dairy sector from the end of the second war until now. Finally we give some suggestions for policies to produce local collective goods.