Agri Tour Digital Library
Sustainable Food Movements and Gastronomy Innovations

Tradition, Innovation, and Local Impact

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IN THIS LESSON

Preserving Heritage Through Innovation and Community Impact

Lector: Michele Filippo Fontefrancesco

Traditional foods are powerful cultural assets that shape identity, attract visitors, and strengthen communities. This course examines how culinary heritage can be protected, reinterpreted, and transformed through innovation without losing its authenticity. Drawing on concepts from the presentation—such as the tangible and intangible elements of food heritage (ingredients, skills, tools, stories) and the process of heritization (Awareness, Qualification, Legitimization, Realization) —participants explore how local traditions can be made relevant for modern audiences.

The course also looks at the role of innovation, using four key lenses highlighted in the lecture: challenging orthodoxies, harnessing trends, leveraging resources, and understanding community needs. These tools help food producers and tourism operators keep traditions vibrant and engaging.

A significant part of the course focuses on strengthening local supply chains—often weakened by structural fragilities, limited visibility, market access barriers, insufficient digitization, and weak networking. Participants learn how to support producers, build partnerships, and create food tourism models that empower communities.

Finally, the session introduces food scouting practices—documenting unique local foods, understanding their culinary history, identifying risks, and developing preservation roadmaps—to ensure that heritage becomes a meaningful component of sustainable tourism experiences.

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  • The following three readings have been selected to deepen the understanding of some key conceptual and methodological issues that are central to our discussion. 

    1. Recognising, Safeguarding and Promoting Food Heritage (Zocchi, Fontefrancesco, Corvo & Pieroni, 2021), offers a valuable introduction to the concept of heritization in the field of food. It provides a theoretical framework for understanding how foods become recognized and safeguarded as heritage, opening up questions of cultural, social, and political relevance. 

    2. Scouting for Food Heritage for Achieving Sustainable Development (Fontefrancesco, Zocchi & Pieroni, 2022), explores the methodological dimensions of identifying and documenting food heritage. Focusing in particular on the Ark of Taste initiative and its applications in Tanzania, the article highlights the challenges and opportunities of heritage scouting as a tool for sustainability. 

    3. A Fragile Food System: Navigating the Tension between Global and Local Agrifood Chains (Fontefrancesco, 2025) addresses the vulnerabilities of local food chains. Using Italian examples, it examines how these fragilities affect rural development, bringing to light the complex balance between local resilience and global market pressures.