The role of alternative food networks in agricultural landscape conservation: some evidences from Italy and Spain

Drawing on the vast literature about Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) and by utilizing the concepts of social, spatial and ecological embeddedness, this thesis studies the driving forces boosting the AFN farmers’ behaviours in the Community of Madrid and the AFN and conventional farmers in Sardinia, as well as the promotion of AFN practices within the rural parks of Rivas-Vaciamadrid (Spain) and Milan (Italy). The aim is to discover if, and to what extent, landscape and environmental protection goals are embedded in individual AFN and conventional practices, and how practices are promoted in spatial planning projects regarding alternative forms of production. The case studies are based on the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews: 13 producers in Spain and 25 in Sardinia (including organic and conventional ones), and on the analysis of websites promoting farms belonging to the Soto del Grillo agro-ecological Park in Rivas-Vaciamadrid (7 websites) and the Parco Agricolo Sud in Milan (14 websites). Within the Grounded Theory (GT) framework, codification and saturation methods have been chosen to analyse texts and to determine the sample size. Sampling has been conducted by the non-statistic snowball sampling technique. Codification method allows deeply analysing textual contents and to build a theoretical model describing the case study, by disassembling texts into basic ideas and reassembling them in more general categories. The relationship among categories forms the final theory or model. In the study, the behaviours of Spanish and Sardinian farmers are described through “embeddedness styles” characterised by the way in which categories interplay. In both the case studies, economy and ecology play a different balance within the behaviours, completed by other categories that influence farmers’ insights and practices. Every producer has been included just in one category according to her/his main preference, which does not imply the absence of a positive attitude towards other categories. Websites contents have been analysed by drawing on geographical lores (or knowledges), which have been modified in order to adapt them to the case studies. Geographical lores allow classifying promotional material contents according to the concept of displacement, describing which type of information is used to influence purchasing decisions. Finally, a questionnaire based on the values promoted by the two rural parks has been provided to seven of the 18 Sardinian farmers, in order to discover their attitude towards planning regulations and restrictions related to rural development, rural landscape preservation and environmental protection. Results show how the three types of embeddedness (spatial, ecological and social) work in forming the farmers’ behaviours, and if and to what extent these are influenced by the territorial context where farmers live and work, as for example in the case of the Soto del Grillo Park in the Spanish case. Geographical lores from the websites stress the way of promoting the farms and the agricultural activities, indicating which values are considered more useful to influence consumers’ decisions.