Studia ethnologica Croatica1330-36271848-9532Odsjek za etnologiju i kulturnu antropologiju, Filozofski fakultet Sveučilišta u ZagrebuNaziv izdavaca na engleskom10000 Zagreb, Ivana Lučića 3
sec@ffzg.hrhttp://sec.ffzg.unizg.hr/10.17234/SEC.28.5Pregledni rad
Review articleDAIRYING IN THE MOUNTAIN PASTURES IN THE JULIAN ALPS: HERITAGES, UTOPIAS AND REALITIESMLJEKARSTVO NA PLANINSKIM PAŠNJACIMA ISTOČNIH ALPA: TRADICIJE, UTOPIJE I REALNOSTILEDINEK LOZEJŠPELAspela.ledinek@uniud.itUniversity of Udine
Department of Languages and Literatures, Communication, Education and Society
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This paper focuses on the history and the present state of dairying in the
mountain pastures in the Eastern Alps and examines different recent measures for the
certification of authenticity that aim to link traditional knowledge with sustainable
development.Findings in this article are based on the intensive
participant observation during the grazing seasons of 1998 and 1999, and on continuous
sporadic fieldwork in different alps and conversations with different stakeholders up
until today. The interpretation of these findings is based on and compared to the
findings of Cristina Grasseni (2011) in the Italian North-Western Alps and of Sarah May
(2014) in the German Alps.
Ovaj se rad bavi poviješću i sadašnjim stanjem mljekarstva na planinskim pašnjacima
istočnih Alpa te ispituje različite aktualne mjere potvrđivanja autentičnosti čiji je cilj
povezati tradicionalna znanja s održivim razvojem. U ovom radu predstavljeni rezultati
istraživanja nastali su intenzivnim promatranjem sa sudjelovanjem u razdobljima ispaše,
tijekom 1998. i 1999. godine, te kontinuiranim terenskim radom u više navrata u različitim
dijelovima Alpa, do današnjih dana, mahom kroz razgovore s raznim sugovornicima.
Interpretacija podataka temelji se i komparira s ranijim nalazima Christine Grasseni
(2011) koja je istraživala u talijanskim sjeverozapadnim Alpama i Sarah May (2014) koja je
svoja istraživanja provodila u njemačkim Alpama.
dairyingthe Julian AlpsAlps (high altitude pastures and seasonal settlements)Alpine husbandryprotected designation of originmljekarstvoJulijske AlpeAlpe (pašnjaci na velikim visinama)ratarstvo u Alpamazaštićene oznake zemljopisnog podrijetla
The aim of this article is to present the state of (traditional) dairying knowledge in the
mountain pastures
In the text I will also use the term alp, which derives from the German term die Alp or
die Alm and designates seasonal mountain pasture.
of the Julian Alps. In the first part, I will outline a brief history of Alpine
husbandry, mountain pasture and dairying, i.e. the past elements and practices of which some
are today considered (cultural) heritage. In the second part, I will discuss utopias and
realities of contemporary Alpine pasture dairying practices that are confronted with issues
of heritagization processes, oxymoronic sustainable development and EU Common Agricultural
Policy. Findings in this article are based on the intensive participant observation during
the grazing seasons of 1998 and 1999, and on continuous sporadic fieldwork in different alps
and conversations with different stakeholders up until today. The interpretation of these
findings is based on and compared to the findings of Cristina Grasseni (2011) in the Italian North-Western Alps and of Sarah May (2014) in the German Alps.
In mountain environments, where agricultural activities are constrained by climatic effects
of altitude, edaphic factors, scarcity of soil and steep gradients of the land, pastoralism
has always been the most effective and dominant agricultural activity. Large expanses of
grasslands, which ring the valleys between the tree line and the glaciers, could be made
accessible for productive activities because of animals’ ability to convert natural plants
into nutritive food (Viazzo 1989:19). A
combination of cultivation and herding, known as Alpine husbandry or Alpine agro-pastoral
system, consisted of two (or more) spatially segregated spheres of production: fields and
meadows near the village, and the alps, i.e. high-altitude pastures, which during the summer
offered grazing for cattle, sheep and goats. In Slovenian, these alps are known as
planine or planšarije, in Italian as
alpi, alpeggi or malghe, in Friulian as
mont, and in German as Almen or Alpen.
The term is of Pre-Roman origin and designates not only pastures, but also huts, stalls and
sometimes even dairies that were occupied by animals, herders and eventually dairymen in the
summer months. Herders and cattle would not move directly from the village to the alps;
instead, they would first transfer to granges in the higher meadows (rovt
in Slovenian), which were used for grazing in combination with haying and perhaps
some cultivation. After a couple of weeks, the livestock was moved to the lower alps, where
the animals would stay from two to four weeks before they were transferred to the upper
alps, where they would spend the peak season. In September, they would again descend to the
lower alps, then to granges and finally to the villages (Cole and Wolf 1999:119-152; Netting
1981:19; Viazzo 1989:20).
Breeding and transhumance of livestock in the Alps had existed as early as prehistory and
antiquity; its existence in the Eastern Alps was proven by archaeological finds as well as
the etymology of toponyms and pasture and dairying terms (Cevc 2006:113–121; Mandl 2007: Novak 1961:126–128). The archaeological finds of
vessels with holes (hypothesized to be cheese drainers) demonstrate that cheese-making
technology in the Eastern Alps was already known in the Roman period (Cevc 2006:243–246); however, it has not been proven if cheese was in
fact made in the mountain pastures. There are similar etymological legends in several Alpine
regions explaining how shepherds were taught to make cheese by the savage man. They are
supposed to have preserved the tradition that the Indo-European peoples of the Apennine
peninsula and the Alps learnt how to make cheese from the early inhabitants (Cevc 2006:242; Grafenauer 1958:50–51; Matičetov
1972:87–94). Linguistic and legal history research supports the assumption that the
(Romanized) inhabitants of the region already possessed dairying knowledge which they later
transmitted to the newcomers in the Eastern Alps (Novak 1961:123–134).
Payments in cheese for hiring a mountain pasture during the summer season, which were
documented in the written sources of the Patriarchs of Aquileia, prove that cheese had been
processed from milk in mountain pastures of the Julian Alps as early as the 13th century
(Cevc 2006: 248–249; Kos 1948:30–32; Melik
1950:97–101; Pascolini and Tessarin
1985:51–52; Vilfan 1996:228).
E.g. in the land registry of the Tolmin region it is documented that in 1338 the Kašina
alp under the Krn Mountain, owned by the Patriarchs of Aquileia, was leased for the
reimbursement of duties in the form of cheese, in Latin called caseus (Kos 1948:33).
Also the archaeological finds of torilo, i.e. a perforated cheese-draining piece of
pottery, and shallow bowls from the alps attest to the existence of dairying at the end of
the Middle Ages (Cevc 2006:251). It is believed that
in that period, cheese was made from sour sheep milk (Bitterli-Waldfogel 1999:110).
Dairying became even more significant within the Modern Age physiocratic efforts of the
Austrian Monarchy in the 19th century. Communal herding
Two most evident advantages of communal herding were: (1) released manpower for
agricultural tasks (by tending their livestock, a few individuals could relieve all the
village households of many time-consuming chores, thereby enabling the rest of the
working population to concentrate on agricultural activities), and (2) alleviation of
the problems of spatial disjunction between village fields and alps (Netting 1981:64–65; Viazzo 1989:23; Vincze
1980:397–397). Some of the authors pointed out other advantages of communal
herding: e.g. care for pastures and their accessories (huts, stalls, enclosures, etc.).
Communal herding is usually associated with communal tenure of the higher alps. By
contrast, fields, meadows and other resources lying in lower-altitude production zones
were subject to individual tenure (Peattie
1971:134; Viazzo 1989:24).
and land tenure – which were common for the upper alps, but not the lower alps and high
meadows – were practiced by means of communal butter and cheese production. The basis for
distribution of cheese or income was the quantity of milk produced after the cattle had been
grazing on the mountain pasture on the measuring day (Ložar 1944:168–171). Members of the community later organised themselves in
cooperatives. The predecessors of such cooperatives date back to the end of the 18th and
early 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, the Austrian Imperial Royal
Ministry of Agriculture accelerated Alpine dairy farming, cattle in particular, and offered
support and incentives for the improvement of the mountain pasture economy and the promotion
of dairying (Valenčič 1990:31–42). The regional
agricultural societies published professional literature (e.g. Trientl 1872; Wilhelm 1871), invited experts from Switzerland to
teach the local cheesemakers about Swiss dairying (Povše
1870:18–17), and encouraged farmers to establish and join dairy cooperatives. These
were established in order to improve the quality of production in accordance with strict
rules regarding quantity, quality and hygiene of the delivered milk, and increase the profit
(Valenčič 1990:32–37). In the late 19th
century, the eventual individual production of butter, cheese from sour milk and cottage
cheese was substituted by more profitable common dairying under the supervision of a hired
skilled cheese-maker and sweet milk cheese production (Ledinek Lozej 2013a:67–77; Novak 1987:77–78; 1989; Taborra 2008:
26; Valenčič 1990:33–37).
Agricultural societies especially endeavoured to introduce the production of cheeses
like Gruyère and Emmentaler (Mesar 1876:104).
In the first half of the 20th century, competent state agencies proceeded to promote
efficient dairying by publishing handbooks (Pevc
1925; 1926; Spiller-Muys 1926), founding dairy schools and, after World War
I, carrying out the restoration of the alps (Marsano
1932; Tuma 1924). We can observe similar
endeavours in the first decade after World War II. In the 1970s, dairying knowledge began to
disappear in the alps as a result of different socio-economic factors; mostly due to the
processes of urbanization and deagrarization, which led to the general abandonment of the
Alpine husbandry, and, to a lesser extent due to the transport of milk by means of cisterns
or milk pipes to the dairies in the valley. Whereas grazing in the alps has been preserved
to a large extent, dairying – if we disregard individual processing of small amounts of milk
and consider only processing of large quantities of milk – has been continuously preserved
in only a few mountain pastures.
In the Slovenian part of the Julian Alps, these alps are: Krnica, Lom, Medrje, Podkuk,
Polog, Pretovč, Razor, Stador and Sleme in the region of Tolmin; Božca, Hlevišče,
Kašina, Matajur and Zaprikraj in the region of Kobarid; and Bitnje, Goreljek, Laz,
Konjska dolina, Konjščica, Krstenica, Praprotnica, Uskovnica, Velo polje, and Zajamniki
in the region of Bohinj (Ledinek Lozej
2013a:73). In the Italian Part of the Julian Alps, these Alps are: Sompdogna in
the valley of Dogna, Lussari above Val Canale, Pecol under Montasio and Cuarnan above
Gemona (Dreossi and Pascolini 2010:187–214; Chiopris and Pittino 2013). – For better readability, all toponyms from the
Italian part are kept in the official, Italian form, although they also exist in
Slovenian (and in some areas also in Friulian and German).
Surprisingly, it has also been revitalised in some alps recently.
In the Slovenian part of the Julian Alps, these mountain pastures are Duplje, Javornik,
Kuhinja, Krnica, Leskovica, Zaslap and Zadnji Vogel (Ledinek Lozej 2013a:73), and in the Italian part these are
Bieliga, Confin, Coot and Plan dei Spadovai, (Dreossi and Pascolini 2010:189–212).
Searching for reasons for the preservation and revitalisation has led us to the crossroads
between sometimes utopian aspirations of the European Union Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP), implemented through national and (macro) regional measures, and the attempts of the
local livestock farmers to survive in the new realities of a globalised world; between the
European, national and regional policies and the revival and revitalisation of the past
(also known as traditional) practices and products. These attempts to survive are, of
course, not new; what is new is their active (or inactive) role in the labelling of products
and wider glocalisation processes as well as heritagization practices.
Today, milk processing in the mountain pastures is encouraged by different EU CAP measures.
The CAP – general guidelines are framed on the EU level, whereas detailed implementation
varies and is dealt with on the national or regional levels – provides a set of financial
subsidies to farmers in the form of market, income and rural development support (Nori and Gemini 2011:2). Remuneration of these
agro-environmental measures is related to the amount of land managed by grazing activities
regardless of the type of cattle (i.e. dairy or non-dairy). Another European and national
measure of the agricultural quality policy, which encourages the production of cheese, is
the provision of geographical indication labels, such as Protected Designation of Origin
(PDO) or trademarks. This is based on the EU legal framework, which first came into force in
1992, and on the EU Regulation from 2012. The preambles to this Regulation cite consumer
demand for quality foodstuffs and identify a number of goals, e.g. promotion of products
with specific characteristics, particularly those from less-favoured rural areas, provision
of clear information to consumers regarding product origin, increase of income for farmers
in exchange for their genuine efforts in quality improvement, and the retention of
population in rural areas (Regulation (EU) No
1151/2012:1–7). An application for a PDO is first made to the national authorities
and, if found to be acceptable, forwarded to the European Commission for the final approval.
In order to qualify for a PDO, the cheese must have the qualities and characteristics which
are essential to its region of production; furthermore, it has to be produced, processed,
and prepared exclusively within that region.
There are four regional hard cheeses that are traditionally produced in the mountain
pastures of the Julian Alps and are awarded a PDO; three on the Slovenian and one on the
Italian side. The Montasio cheese was originally produced in the mountain pastures under the
the Montasio mountain chain in the Western Julian Alps (today’s Italy). It was already
mentioned on a price list dating back to 1775. At the end of the 19th century, with the
expansion of the cooperative dairies it spread also in the underlying valleys and
neighbouring plains (Ghinetti 1885; Čotar 1988:42–95). Due to the efficient state and
regional support it has been a protected trademark since 1955; moreover, since 1986,
Two years after the establishment of the Consortium for the Protection of Montasio
Cheese (Montasio 2012).
it has featured a PDO on the national level and since 1996 also on the European level
(Regulation (EC) No 1107/96:6; Čotar 1988:42–95). A lot of energy has been invested in
promotion and marketing of the Montasio cheese. In addition to featuring a protected
trademark and PDO, it has been one of the four Italian products,
Beside Montasio cheese there were also San Daniele and Parma ham, and Grana Padano
cheese (Consorzio 2016b).
chosen together with other European PDO products for promotion in the American market
by the European Legends project (Consorzio
2016b). While the production of Montasio cheese is nowadays widespread in almost
all of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region and in parts of the Veneto region,
The production area of the Montasio cheese is as follows: the entire territory of the
provinces of Udine, Pordenone, Gorizia and Trieste in the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region,
and the whole territory of the provinces of Treviso and Belluno, as well as parts of the
provinces of Venice and Padua in the Veneto Region. There are together 43 producers
(Consorzio 2016a).
the symbolic value of the denomination has, as related by a livestock owner, vanished
(Field records, July 15, 2016), and has become, as related by a cheesemaker, casual dairy
cheese (Field records, July 16, 2016). Therefore, it is not surprising that today there are
actually three varieties of certified Montasio cheese, namely the Montasio cheese PDO, the
Montasio cheese PDO from the alp, which is “only produced from the milk of cows pastured in
the alps under the Montasio” (Associazione
2012a), and the Montasio cheese PDO from only Italian Simmental breed (Bovolenta
and Romanzin 2014:23). These alps have been owned by the Breeders Association of Friuli
Venezia Giulia since 1936 and managed by the Montasio Alps Consortium,
The Montasio Alps Consortium has also renamed the alps of Pecol, Parte di Mezzo and
Larice into the Alp of Montasio (Associazione 2012b).
which have invested a lot into the development of tourism infrastructure, promotion of
the alp, and organization of various events (Associazione 2012c, 2012d). However, cheese producers in the
neighbouring alps are more inclined to produce the so called Alpine cheese (It. “formaggio
di malga”):
“We produce Alpine cheese. The Montasio cheese you can get anywhere and anytime,
whereas the Alpine cheese is produced only for three months in an alp; therefore, it has
higher added value.” (Field notes, 16 July, 2016)
Promotion of the Montasio cheese in the Montasio alp. Photo by: Špela Ledinek Lozej,
2016.
The cheeses produced in the Slovenian part of the Julian Alps and awarded a PDO are the
Tolminc (Regulation (EC) No 187/2012),
the Bovec cheese (Regulation (EC) No
753/2012) and the Mohant cheese (Regulation (EC) No 1163/2013).
There were also intensions to certify the Bohinj cheese, other variety of the regional
cheese, which is technologically similar to the Emmentaler cheese. In 1999 the Bohinj
cheese was registered as a trademark, as “a special type of Emmentaler cheese” (Bohinjska sirarna 2013). Those
responsible for the rural development in the Triglav National Park – one of the two
natural parks in the Julian Alps, the second being the Julian Prealps Natural Park in
Italy – think, that it would be better to work on the national and European designation
of origin instead of marketing a similar version of the original Swiss Emmentaler cheese
(Field notes, May 11, 2012). However, a member of the Bohinj Cheese Society, which
proposed the certification of the Mohant cheese and the author of its specifications,
explains that they also wanted to certify the Bohinj cheese at the same time as the
Mohant cheese, but the production of the Bohinj cheese at the time when the
certification process began did not meet the PDO criteria (Field notes, July 15, 2016).
As opposed to the large number of producers of the Montasio cheese, there are
surprisingly few producers of PDO-labelled cheeses in Slovenia. In 2016 there were three
producers of the Tolminc cheese, three of the Bovec cheese, and five of the Mohant cheese
(Field notes, July 15, 2016). The low number can be partially ascribed to the producers
joining into consortia and partially to the unfamiliarity with PDO, as well as to general
disinterest in it because of a technologically, administratively, and economically demanding
certification process:
“It’s very complex! There are costs for paying the certification, not to mention
additional red tape, paperwork! This is very strict!” (Field
records, July 15, 2016).
Cheesemaker Gregor Gartner washing the cauldron, Laz alp. Photo by: Špela Ledinek Lozej,
2012.
None of the above mentioned scarce producers of PDO certified cheeses are located in the alps!
In 2015 the PDO Tolminc cheese was produced in the Kuhinja alp (Field records, June 21,
2015).
What are the reasons for this aversion to certification among the cheesemakers in the
alps? The first reason is the presumable uniqueness and irreproducibility of the Alpine
cheese. As it was stated by the cheesemaker from Gorjuše, cheese differs according to the
particularity of the production area, of the alp and of the pasture, and even according to
the predilection of the animals for certain herbs and not the others; therefore “the Alpine
cheese cannot be consistent!” (Field records, August 22, 1998). There is a wide variety of
the same product;
For the argument see also Čotar (1988:89–93),
Pascolini (2008b:44), Taborra (2008: 22–23) and Tonutti (2008:18–20).
therefore the producers can hardly follow the PDO requirements for standardization.
Traditional technologies are soft, difficult to keep under control and therefore do not
always yield the expected results (Čotar 1988:43).
The second reason is probably the quantity of cheese produced in the alps. There is no
market surplus, it is consumed at home, and when it comes to sales, the owners have no
difficulty selling it all at the same price as the certified one. That is obvious from the
statement of a cheesemaker from one of the Kobarid alps:
“We do not need to certify our cheese; it is the same as the Tolminc, we just don’t
have the right to sell it under that name. Anyways, we eat it all or sell it at the same
price. So there is no difference and no need.” (Field records, 21 June, 2015)
“Whereas some cheesemakers in the alps are producing traditional varieties of
cheese, which are almost the same as the labelled ones, and are just not allowed to sell
it officially under that name (which doesn’t mean that they are not selling it
unofficially), the others prefer to produce small-size semi-hard cheeses whose ripening is
shorter and which are in demand by the tourists.” (Field records, 10 October,
1998; 28 May, 2012; 16 July, 2016)
For greater detail on the area of Triglav National Park see Ledinek Lozej (2013b:60–61).
Anica Kovačič making cheese out of goat milk, Laz alp. Photo by: Špela Ledinek Lozej,
1998.
Cheese moulding in the wooden hoop, Laz alp. Photo by: Špela Ledinek Lozej,
2012.
The fact that small scale producers have difficulties entering the quality system was also
recognized by the European Commission’s Directorate General for Agriculture and Rural
Development. Therefore, they started to work on local agriculture and direct sales (local
food, short food supply chains, direct sales, local food systems and mechanisms) and have
recently developed several policy tools for short food chains and local food systems and a
new labelling scheme (Tome 2013; Santini and Gomez y Paloma 2013). On the national and
regional level these measures are implemented by the Slovenian Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry and Food under the Selected Quality—Slovenia label
It aims at fostering the distinctive value, origin, and special characteristics of the
Slovenian products (Ministarstvo
2016).
and by the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region under the Local Small Productions and recently
under AQUA label.
They aim at enabling the production of safe foods without excessive red tape (Bianco,
Pozzi and Tudorov 2015; Regione 2016).
The complexity of branding is even greater because there are several other quality
schemes: the municipal trademark From Bohinj (Turizem
Bohinj 2014), the awards Specialities of Slovene Farms of the Chamber of
Agriculture and Forestry Slovenia (Dobrote 2015),
the brands of regional development agencies,
In 2008 the Idrija-Cerkno Development Agency and some other regional development
agencies launched the Grape brand (under the LEADER project) with the aim of improving
the visibility and value of agricultural produce and products, as well as handicraft
products (Idrijsko-Cerkljanska 2015). It
hasn’t flourished at all.
to name but a few. These brands and awards are easily accessible as a PDO, but seeing
that their benefits are vague (Field records, July 15, 2016), their acquisition depend on
the producer’s own initiative. Furthermore, they are usually not economically beneficial and
sustainable in the long run.
This unsustainability is also the main reason why the Triglav National Park is
reluctant to introduce the Triglav National Park quality label (Field records, May 11,
2012; July 15, 2016).
The need for certification, especially the European and national PDO one, is therefore
unclear. Some cheese producers consider it an opportunity for their promotion and guarantee
of quality, as it is envisaged in the regulations, but not all of them meet the requirements
or can cover the costs of certification. They understand it at best as symbolic or social
capital and do not have any economic benefits of branding. Therefore, the cheesemakers in
the alps (except the above mentioned producers of the PDO cheese in the Montasio alp)
produce almost the same variety of cheese as the certified ones and sell it officially under
a different name (or under-the-counter). However, other cheesemakers are more inclined to
produce other varieties of cheese. In my opinion the cheeses which are not awarded PDOs and
trademarks, are nevertheless authentic, if not even more so.
According to Cristina Grasseni (2011) food
standardization
… is felt not only in economic terms, but also in symbolic and cultural terms. It
is not only a movement towards more regulation and accountability, but also an increase in
uniformity and in homogeneity, as opposed to diversity and variety…
The article is an on-line version of the paper (GRASSENI, Cristina. 2011. "Re-inventing food: Alpine cheese in the age of
global heritage". Anthropology of food, vol. 8. http://aof.revues.org/6819
(accessed 12 March, 2016)). There is no pagination. The text is divided into paragraphs
and the quoted text is in the second paragraph.
Despite the attempt of the certification process to emphasize the authenticity of cheese
varieties, the process is at the same time one of standardization, unification, and
homogenization due to the precise production protocols (e.g. quality control checks) that
guarantee standard and consistent taste and appearance. We can agree with Cristina Grasseni (2011), who according to Robert Wilk (1995) claims that in the field of food
production and consumption, global structures of common difference promote distinction and
diversity, but only of certain types. Unfortunately for some representatives of European and
national agrarian policy and fortunately for the rest – as it was explained by the
cheesemakers and by other researchers (Čotar
2010; Pascolini 2008b:44, Taborra 2008:22–23; Tonutti 2008:18–20) – the Alpine cheese is hardly subjected to
standardization.
The transition from the production of local varieties of dairy products aimed at local
consumption to the production of market cheeses in the Julian Alps began as early as the end
of the 19th century, when regional agricultural societies invited experts from Switzerland
to teach the local cheesemakers about Swiss dairying. This was followed by endeavours of the
qualified cooperative cheesemakers and accelerated by the introduction of nationally and EU
acknowledged Protected Designations of Origin. On that timeline, we can – according to Cristina Grasseni (2011) – observe complex steps of
reciprocal processes of progressive diversification and homogenization: from the use of
sterile tools to the hygienization of the processing environment; from the auditing of
production protocols (Strathern 2000) to
certification; and from defining the specific geographical boundaries of typical production
to their legal and marketing branding.
In this regard, I would like to question the real impact of the EU measures and regulations
referring to the preservation of dairying knowledge in the alps. The overall aim of the EU
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is to provide the European farmers with a reasonable
standard of living and the consumers with quality food at fair prices as well as to maintain
farming in all regions of the EU (Nori and Gemini
2011:2). However, as Gray (2002:31–32)
already pointed out, the CAP usually sets conditions for farmers to produce (in their
practices) in a specific rural locality in line with a version of locality set out in the
CAP. However, that EU version – as can be seen from the example of producers of
non-certified Tolminc-like cheese or the producers of local varieties of cheeses from the
Bohinj alps – is not necessarily consistent with the rurality practised and envisaged by
farmers. We can agree with Sarah May (2014:65) that
geographical indications evoke governmentally initiated and dominated practises and that it
is an essentially top-down undertaking. In our case they are favoured by the representatives
of EU, national and regional agrarian policy, as well as by some regional development
agencies and only a few producers. However, cheesemakers, who should be the target group of
the European instrument, do not necessarily benefit from it.
We can see that the utopia of the actual construction or re-invention of food lies in the
fact that just like in the case of sustainable development, a typical or an authentic
product is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron (Papa
2002). Typical products have thus been invented only recently in order to obtain
the acknowledged geographical indications and market recognition. They are the result of two
distinct and contradictory processes: on the one hand, market demand for organic and
traditional food, and on the other, rediscovery of local products as a global phenomenon.
Typical products converge in the general process of heritagization, in which past elements
(e.g. traditional skills and food) are rediscovered and reinvented, both as a means of local
development and as bearers of collective territorial identities (Grasseni 2011).
Whereas the Montasio cheese has outgrown its original slopes under the mountain chain of
Montasio in the Julian Alps and, due to intensive state and regional support, has become the
main regional dairies’ brand, representative not only of the Friuli and Veneto territory
(Pascolini 2008a:33–42), but – as it was
demonstrated by the recent promotional campaign (Conzorzio 2016b) – also of the whole Italy and Europe, the representative range of
the Bovec and Mohant cheese and Tolminc is more modest. Despite differences in the
representative range and number of producers of the Montasio cheese and other PDO labelled
cheeses there is no difference in the scope of the production of PDO labelled cheeses in the
mountain pastures of the Julian Alps. Namely, the PDO labelled Montasio cheese is produced
only in the Pecol (nowadays Montasio) alp, owned and managed by the offshoots of the Friuli
Venezia Giulia Region, whereas the other mountain pasture cheesemakers prefer to produce
other varieties of cheese. Therefore, with the exception of the Pecol (Montasio) alp, we can
hardly see any impact of the European policy on the quality and quantity of dairying
practices in the alps. Nonetheless, it does not mean that one cannot find tasty, quality and
authentic cheeses in the alps of the Julian Alps!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
These research results were obtained by means of funding from the European Social Fund
under the Operational Programme 2014–2020, within Axis 3 – Education and Training, Specific
Programme n. 26 – Incoming and outgoing mobility of Researchers, TALENTS³ Fellowship
Programme.
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