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Paper short abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Piedmont , the article explores the issues of commitment in the lens of genealogical commitment and shows how farmers navigate market and policy constraints through tactical resistance , preserving their "form of life" amidst ecological fragility.

Paper long abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork in South-Eastern Piedmont (Italy), this paper ethnographically interrogates the “weight” of ecological transition and industrial standardization on family farms. While European policy narratives frame agriculture through the lens of technical efficiency and measurable sustainability , this study reveals the agricultural experience as a heavy accumulation of labor, bureaucratic sacrifice, and material struggle.

Moving beyond economic interest, the paper analyzes the farm not merely as a production unit, but as a site of “genealogical commitment”. Here, the stake is the maintenance of a "form of life" rooted in intergenerational memory and moral responsibility toward the land. However, this commitment is increasingly weighed down by the labor of compliance: the "second job" of navigating digital portals, certifying eco-schemes, and meeting industrial parameters that render the field legible to the State but alien to local knowledge.

The paper proposes the concept of "bounded peasant autonomy" to describe how farmers endure this weight. They do not act with full sovereignty, nor are they passive victims; rather, they engage in a constant, exhausting negotiation of constraints. The "cost" of staying involved in agriculture is paid through "everyday forms of resistance"—tactical adaptations of protocols, the intensification of family (often female) administrative labor, and the friction between maintaining yielding crops and adhering to environmental audits. By tracing these frictions, the paper illuminates the material and existential toll required to maintain the “stake” of rural continuity in an era of precarious ecological governance.