Affrontare la Pandemia Covid-19: cronache dai pascoli

For pastoralists, uncertainty did not start with the Covid-19, it is rather part of everyday life. Pastoralism, the semi-extensive breeding of livestock, is a production system forced to adapt to open and variable ecosystems. Through an historical perspective in the study of uncertainty, the article focuses on the adaptive strategies that shepherds implements to manage the main uncertainties that characterize his work. This lens is used to analyse the effects of the pandemic, in particular during the lockdown period. We analyse the impact of Covid-19 on pastoralists taking as the main reference market in which milk is bestowed, distinguishing between pastoralists who sell milk to the industrial system, multifunctional pastoralists who sell through short supply chains and precarious farmers for whom informal channels are essential. The research is based on a wide set of qualitative and ethnographic data collected by the two researchers through a long period of field work.