Revisiting Transhumance from Stilfs, South Tyrol, Italy. The Everyday Diverse Economy of a Forgotten Alternative Food Network

This chapter discusses the pastoral practice of transhumance through the lens of the idea of an alternative food network.The literature on alternative food networks in geography and agro-food studies is abundant. However, it has neglected to explore how transhumance is a lively agricultural practice that engenders and partakes in food networks that may be radical in their alternativeness.The chapter then draws on ethnographic data to offer an account of the everyday practices and routines of humans and animals working on the summer right above the village of Stilfs/Stelvio in South Tyrol, northeast Italy. It concludes with a short discussion that points to how alpine transhumance may be seen as engendering radically alternative food networks which enrich what Gibson-Graham have notably called the “diverse economy”