The survey for cultural and economic value assessment of food and food- ways in Bio-Districts: the case of "Bio-Distretto della Via Amerina e delle Forre"

1. Theoretical Background The knowledge and the cultural heritage concerning traditional recipes based on local and ancient crop varieties are very diffused in small rural areas and in local communities, in particular in Italy. This kind of knowledge, that is at the heart of the relationship between communities and their food habits, if well recognised and documented can contribute to the sustainable development of territories in which it developed through oral transmission of local people. At the same time, Traditional Knowledge (TK), at the light of the UN Convention for Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, must be preserved for future generations. Thus, it is important to identify and to develop some tools and techniques to obtain data for the valorisation and the promotion of food heritage in the light of TK and also Knowledge Transfer (KT). In this process, a crucial step is the involvement of local communities, in order to elicit and to track the information of which they are custodians, their feelings as well as their attitudes and preferences towards the use of this intangible heritage. The final goal is to engage them in the management and transfer of food knowledge for the sustainable economic, social and environmental development of their territory. 2. Research Objective The objective of the paper is to conduct a survey, in a very specific territory, that is the “Bio-Distretto della Via Amerina e delle Forre”, in the Central Italy, in order to gather information concerning the actual awareness of local people and organizations concerning their food heritage and the values (cultural and economic) they attribute to it. The information retrieved will than be used as a basis for the preparation of a theoretical framework of valuation and management of food heritage through citizen engagement in other areas/organizations. The Bio-District seems particularly suitable for this kind of investigation, as it is a geographical area where farmers, citizens, tourist operators, associations and public authorities enter into an agreement for the sustainable management of local resources, based on organic production and consumption (short food chain, purchasing groups, organic canteens in public offices and schools). The local knowledge concerning foodways and traditional techniques that smallholder farmers apply, indeed derive from the deep understanding of the context they interact with and are adapted to. As a matter of fact, all stakeholders of the Bio-District are natural depositary of intangible heritage, potential sources of information and of subsequent management of their knowledge. 3. Methodology The paper will be based on an inductive approach, using the survey method as an instrument to collect data to derive a theoretical framework for assessing cultural and economic values of food heritage. The survey will be conducted in the Bio-District of “Via Amerina e delle Forre”, located in Lazio Region, in the Central Italy. The survey will have the structure of a questionnaire, used to elicit awareness, feelings and wishes about the food heritage and their desired management for the development of the territory, in order to achieve information about cultural (in particular historical, social and religious) and economic values of this heritage. In particular, for the latter type of values, a Contingent Valuation Method (CVM) will be used. CVM is an approach designed to create the missing market for heritage considered as public goods by determining what people would be willing to pay (WTP) for specified changes in the quantity or quality of such goods or what they would be willing to accept (WTA) in compensation for well-specified reductions/losses in the provision of these goods. CVM circumvents the absence of markets for food heritage by presenting consumers with a choice situation in which they have the opportunity to buy or to sell the flow of services/benefits deriving from this kind of intangible heritage. 4. Expected Results The expected result in terms of Knowledge Management and Transfer will be the development of a tool that can be interpreted as a Participatory Rural Assessment (PRA) method. PRA not only aims at gathering knowledge about skills of local communities and their values, it also aims directly at empowering citizens. Indeed, the mix of surveys and public engagement techniques aimed at understanding values and knowledge that local populations in Bio-Districts wish to sustain, allows an informed and communitarian preservation of food intangible heritage. The main limitation of the paper is the restricted investigation area and the limited data collected.