Production innovation and environmental protection in the management of rural landscapes: the UNESCO vineyard landscapes of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato

President of the Study Centre for Hill Rural Development of the University of Turin, 10095 Grugliasco, Largo P. Braccini, 2, Italy

^* Corresponding author: marco.devecchi@unito.it

Abstract

In Italy, the landscape appears more and more as the essential element of a sustainable economic development linked to environmental peculiarities and food excellence. In agriculture, the winning aspect of production is no longer measured, in fact, in merely “organoleptic” terms, but also through the issues of environmental protection and care and careful landscape management, as a cornerstone of quality and typical products. In this regard,production - in a broad sense related to wellbeing and leisure, as well as wine - absolutely needs places identifying it, since its value is intimately connected with the quality of the original rural landscapes. These landscapes - that still today represent an element of strong characterization of the single territorial realities - are those that denote a balanced intervention of man on the natural elements; they are those that offer a clear presence of historical signs and legible links between structure and land use. In recent years, agriculture appears to be increasingly responsible for carrying out a plurality of functions, in addition to the acknowledged traditional ones. The maintenance of the hydrogeological structure, the preservation of landscapes with significanthistorical-cultural values, and the maintenance of biodiversity are all the more important. In this perspective,farmers can certainly contribute to conserving and effectively producing high quality landscapes, through a careful “care” of the land in which they work, so as to maintain and strengthen the characteristics of formal quality and historical identity, by avoiding scrupulously useless compromises. A case study of great interest to verify the concreteness and general applicability of this type of reasoning is represented in Piedmont by the territories of Langhe-Roero and Monferrato, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2014, where there are interesting research and experimentation activities in the fields of agricultural sustainability and territorial planning.