Paper short abstract:

The goal of the presentation is to capture the struggles of various institutional and individual actors in rural southern Transylvania to add value to local milk products and to reposition the local farmed landscape under the regulations of the Common Agricultural Policy.

Paper long abstract:

The recent conservation and local development efforts in the Tarnava Mare region of Southern Transylvania have been revolving around the preservation of the historic landscape of the Saxon villages. Various actors have been struggling to reconcile the traditional farming and pastoral practices (centered on cow-herding) with the European policies that have been urging change in the local rural livelihood strategies. The pressure to convert subsistence peasant households into farms also triggers radical environmental changes and landscape transformations (pasture and haymeadow management etc).

The goal of the presentation is to capture the struggles of various institutional and individual actors to reimagine farming practices and land management strategies. Recently the local actors have been facing the pressure of using the local assets (biodiversity, traditional farming) under new entrepreneurial strategies modelled by a new institutional framework (the Common Agricultural Policy and various agro-environmental schemes) and by the challenges of an emerging market of small-scale quality products. Supported by ethnographic data, the presentation follows a series of local milk and dairy producers in their efforts to add value to their products.