Transumanza in Piemonte: un'opportunità multifunzionale?

TRANSHUMANCE IN PIEDMONT (NW ITALY): A MULTIFUNCTIONAL OPPORTUNITY? The analysis of some productive examples of ovine breeding in Piedmont territory indicates the obvious reasons that push to the maintenance of the activity of sheep breeding through the transhumance. The effects of the abandonment of pastoral activity have widely demonstrated the importance of the role carried out by the ovine breeding from the point of view not only economic, but also ecological and environmental. Together with traditional livestock productions, the new perspectives of sheep breeding are more and more represented by the natural conservation of the landscape in its complex, beyond the possible role in the maintenance of green areas and the precious contribution for the reduction of risks of fire and soil erosion. Tourist initiatives also finalized to the valorisation of the culture of the shepherdesses and the direct selling of the livestock products could surely favour that essential closing up of cultures that in the last half century were so separated as never happened before. It is therefore obvious the importance of these livestock systems through the adoption of the transhumance that not only represents a patrimony tied to the system of traditional breeding but still today needs to be safeguarded both for a possible increasing of its economic value and for the relevant ecological, social and cultural role.