2021 Volume 18 Pages 25-54
This article argues how Territorio-based bottom-up activities using existing rural resources restore the balance of economic, social, and environmental values. First, the EU Common Agriculture Policy and the LEADER programme are explained. After World War II, Europe submitted to an industrial agriculture paradigm, promoting efficiency-oriented farming with mass production, consolidation, and specialization for the primary objective of food production increase. In the 1980s, post-productivism emerged due to agricultural income decline and industry shrinkage. The focus of agriculture was shifted from production to rural amenities, services, landscape and cultural elements. Secondly, this paper explains how the EU works on bottom-up regional revitalization using the Territorio approach. Territorio consists of “landscapes with natural conditions of topography and geology, water and plant ecosystems and with human conditions of agricultural activities, residents in urban and rural areas, farms and monasteries (Jinnai, 2019, p. 13)” and “a region where urban, rural and countryside share one common socio-economic and cultural identity (Jinnai, et al., 2019, p.2)”. This is having success in the EU, in which the stakeholders form networks and collaboratively work and formulate strategies that meet the characteristics and needs of their Territorio. Thirdly, this study describes the case study of the western foothills of Mount Amiata, Grosseto Province in Tuscany. People in the Territorio collaboratively play central roles in endogenous development, resulting in rural revitalization.
