Collective Action for Territorial Quality Differentiation of Cheese In

Collective action for territorial quality differentiation of cheese in mountain areas: Case studies of the Campos de Cima da Serra in Brazil and the Province of Trento in Italy Carine Pachoud matriculation number: 1653510 Dissertation submitted under the doctoral program Geography presented to the Institute of Geography Faculty of Geo- and Atmospheric Sciences University of Innsbruck Supervised by Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Coy (primary supervisor) and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Markus Schermer Composition of the jury: Univ.-Prof. Dr. Johann Stötter, University of Innsbruck - President Univ.-Prof. Dr. Martin Coy, University of Innsbruck - Evaluator Univ.-Prof. Dr. Marianne Penker, University of Vienna - BOKU – Evaluator Defense date and location: Innsbruck, September 10 2020 Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck Eidesstattliche Erklärung Ich erkläre hiermit an Eides statt durch meine eigenhändige Unterschrift, dass ich die vorliegende Arbeit selbständig verfasst und keine anderen als die angegebenen Quellen und Hilfsmittel verwendet habe. Alle Stellen, die wörtlich oder inhaltlich den angegebenen Quellen entnommen wurden, sind als solche kenntlich gemacht. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde bisher in gleicher oder ähnlicher Form noch nicht als Dissertation eingereicht. ________________________________ ________________________________ Datum Unterschrift iii Acknowledgment This PhD thesis is the result of more than three years of research, which was intense and rich in learning. I would therefore like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me to accomplish this research. First of all, I am thankful to Jean-François Tourrand, who made it possible to realize this thesis and who always believed in me. Jean-François established the contact to people all around the world, to my supervisors and to many others who turned out to be essential for the realization of my work. More generally, the progression of my questioning was facilitated by discussions with the researchers from the research unit Management of Renewable Resources and Environment (GREEN), at the International Center in Agronomic Research for Development (CIRAD). Especially I want to mention Vanesse Labeyrie and Etienne Delay, who always encouraged further reflection. I am very grateful for their constant support. I also would like to thank Mabelle Chedid for checking the English grammar of my framework text. My thanks go to my supervisors, Martin Coy and Markus Schermer, who gave me the opportunity to carry out a PhD at the University of Innsbruck, for their contributions and guidance. I am grateful to Enrico Sturaro, who welcomed me to his work team at the Department of Agronomy, Food, Natural Resources, Animals and Environment (DAFNAE) of the University of Padua (UNIPD). The fieldwork in Italy and the completion of the thesis would not have been possible without the financial and technical assistance of the UNIPD. I would also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues from the Working Group for Development Research (AGEF), of the Institute of Geography at the University of Innsbruck (UIBK), especially to Felix Dorn, Robert Hafner, Christian Obermayr, Fernando Ruiz-Peyré and Tobias Töpfer for checking the English grammar and / or commenting my work. I thank the people of the Graduate Program in Rural Development (PGDR) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), especially Paulo Waquil, Alessandra Matte and Rafaela Vendruscolo, for their support, especially at the beginning of the research and their critical voices. The very content of the thesis is mainly owed to all the people I met on the various fields, whether they are producers, technicians or authorities. They were kind enough to give their time and answered my questions with great candor. In the Brazilian fieldwork, I especially iv want to thank Juliana, Lilian, Raquel and the family Lopes, with whom I developed friendly relations. In the Italian fieldwork, I would like to thank the people of the nature park Paneveggio Pale di San Martino, the president of the dairy cooperative of Primiero and all the producer members. More generally, I thank everyone I interviewed. These field surveys were also an opportunity to learn about new cultures, especially culinary specialties, including cheese of course! I would like to thank Etienne Polge from the National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment (INRAE), Riccardo da Re and Maurizio Ramanzin from the UNIPD for their precious contribution to articles. I am grateful to Robin, for his support and the precious discussions we had, as well as all my friends from France, Brazil and Austria. I thank my mother who always believed in me. Thanks to all the people that I did not mentioned but who participated in one way or another in the realization of this thesis. v Summary Globalization leads to development inequalities between the so-called favorable and marginal rural areas. On a generic market, the latter can hardly compete with favorable rural areas because they are generally less endowed with production factors, located far from the markets and often have poorly developed infrastructures and unfavorable natural conditions for production-oriented agriculture. To avoid price competition some marginal rural areas demonstrate capacity to redefine their development paths through endogenous development. This model relies on local resources to offer specific products and services. The present research focuses on cheese agrifood systems in mountain rural areas. Due to the strong symbolic dimension of such systems on the one hand, and the central role of collective organization on the other hand, the territorial approach developed in French-speaking literature seems valuable for the research. In particular, the concept of Localized Agrifood Systems (LAS) appears to be interesting. LAS corresponds to agrifood systems anchored in specific territories, defined as socially constructed, culturally marketed, and institutionally regulated spaces. They rely on territorial quality differentiation of food products, as an alternative to standardized production. This process mobilizes both material attributes related to intrinsic qualities of the product and symbolic attributes linked to the geographical origin. Territorial governance, which means coordination among heterogeneous local actors, ensures the process of differentiation and the construction of cheese reputation. At the same time, this process requires a specific demand related to a higher willingness to pay from consumers. These are the conditions needed to enable a process of territorial development, as it should result in a higher price and a fairer profit distribution and, therefore, in higher incomes and satisfaction of the local needs. In addition, territorial development considers further social, cultural and environmental dimensions. The differentiation process relies on the creativity of the local actors and offers a potential for self-organization, which depends on the ability of these actors to cooperate and to act collectively. The general aim of this research is to analyze how actors in mountain cheese LAS act collectively for the territorial quality differentiation of the cheese. It encompasses three specific objectives described as follows: i) to analyze the territorial governance structures and the collective strategies implemented to differentiate mountain cheese, ii) to analyze relational processes within a collective organization to understand what is decisive in achieving collective action, iii) to link producers’ representations of identity and the feeling of belonging to territory vi to their degree of involvement in collective action. In return, it is to define how these LAS can respond to the challenge of territorial development. The framework of Common Pool Resources (CPRs), territorial proximity and territoriality are employed and connected in this thesis to grasp the relationships between collective action and territory in LAS. First, the CPR framework is used to investigate the normative and multilevel institutional dimensions of collective action, and therefore the governance structures. In fact, this framework allows considering the capacity of self-organization of the local actors through the design of localized institutional arrangements and the establishment of shared norms. At the same time, it also includes the role of governments in potentially supporting localized collective action. Second, the territorial proximity approach is used to integrate the geographical and organized relationships into the analysis. Lastly, the territoriality approach considers the role of identity and feeling of belonging in collective action. This thesis applies both qualitative (e.g. semi-structured interviews, in-depth interviews with key actors, “farm biographies”) and quantitative (e.g. social network analysis, statistics) methods. This research is conducted in two different case studies. The first study area is located in the Campos de Cima da Serra in southern Brazil, where the Serrano cheese is produced. It is a traditional raw milk cheese; however, it is an informal production due to new consumers’ preferences for young instead of matured cheese and difficulties of compliance with hygiene standards. Moreover, production is still poorly organized and the first forms of collective action recently emerged in the 2000s. The second study area is located in the province of Trento, in the Italian Alps. Cheese production is strongly organized by the producers, who are grouped in dairy cooperatives

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