La produzione in proprio di beni alimentari. Aspetti economici e sociali

This paper aims at investigating the typologies of non-professional economic activities linked to agriculture, to understand which are the main features of these activities in Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG) and the relationship between such features and those of households/individuals carrying out them. These issues are arousing growing interest in several research areas since they are connected to food security, wellbeing, health, taking care of land and landscape protection, as well as to economic aspects related to domestic production and its evaluation, the protection and preservation of traditional products. In this context, there is the cultivation of a vegetable garden, an agricultural land, and the habit of raising barnyard animals to produce food primarily intended for household consumption. This paper highlights some social and economic aspects linked to the cultivation of vegetable gardens, using data collected in an in-depth survey carried out in Friuli-Venezia Giulia by IRTEF (Institute for Research on Educational and Training Techniques in Udine). We obtain a complex, though not exhaustive, picture of household behaviours, whose impact on sustainability, territory and economy might be far more sizeable than what so far supposed.