Herding futures: a revolutionary utopia - Exploring threatened entanglements of pastoralists and herds

The mainstream narrative about livestock production portrays the latter as responsible for the meatification of diets, the exploitation of humans and animals, and a large part of agriculture aggregate emissions. Yet, it lumps together all systems of production, failing to acknowledge the persistence – and immense ecological, political, and social value - of models of animal farming other than the livestock industry. Among these, is pastoralism. Building upon such observation, this paper zooms in on Italian agro-pastoral systems, wondering how pastoralist practices are transforming in response to the capitalist logic of the corporate food system, and what are the main challenges they are facing in producing and socially reproducing. Touching upon several, intertwined phenomena, such as CAP speculations, pastoral-tourist economies, human-wildlife conflicts, the labor conditions of migrant shepherds, and unpacking anti-farming arguments, this paper argues that the overarching political strategy deployed to counter de-pastoralisation and deruralizatiton, is one that treats the most tangible symptoms of the multidimensional crisis currently unfolding, while leaving the cause – the capitalist logic underlying the corporate food regime and inducing the marginalization of Inner Areas – essentially intact. Relying on multi-species ethnography, the analysis elaborated in this paper builds upon data collected in Central Italy through participants’ observation and informal conversations with pastoralists and their families, anthropologists, experts in animal husbandry, veterinaries, community workers, artists, and historians. The outcome is a more nuanced picture of what living and working with animals looks like in agro-pastoralist systems, and how these represent an ecologically viable and territorially grounded model of food production.