Producing and consuming artisan food: a way of preserving our biological heritage? : A phenomenographic study on how biological heritage is understood, described and communicated in the context of artisan food production and consumption

In Sweden, the environmental quality goal 13 for A Varied Agricultural Landscape, that combines environment, food production and rurality and aims at keeping the agricultural landscape open, was considered as not achieved in 2016. One of the reasons for this non-achievementis the agricultural intensification and specialisation and in turn the decrease in number of pastures during the 20th century, threating thus habitats, diversity and values resulting from a continuous, traditional use of the land commonly called ‘biological heritage’. This study focuses on the traditional and sustainable animal husbandry using pastures, contributing to both the preservation of biological heritage and the production of high-quality food. It relies upon the assumption that the link between artisan food production and biological heritage is not well understood nor highlighted by the different actors taking part into the process of producing, selling, buying and consuming artisan food products in the rural areas of mid-northern Scandinavia, and therefore the study attempts to contribute with knowledge about how biological heritage is understood, described and communicated within this context. For such purposes the study takes a phenomenographic approach with biological heritage, pastures and artisan food products as the conceptions to be tested, and consists of semi-structured interviews of three agencies and surveys of artisan food producers and consumers. It adopts an environmental communication theoretical framework where a model is suggested for investigating actors’ learning process of biological heritage, from agencies to producers to consumers. The results reveal three phenomenographic categories showing that agencies and producers understand biological heritage in terms of (1) cared habitat and cared species, (2) historical and cultural know-how and (3) animals and their tasteful diet, and it is showed that the necessity of a continuous, traditional human use was less put forward than the cultural dimension of biological heritage. Also producers communicate about biological heritage to consumers through both their products and their actions. Furthermore the results show that consumers’ understandings of biological heritage are similar to the agencies’ and producers’ phenomenographic categories and that they could make a link between artisan food production and biological heritage, but only to some extent. Finally, in order to create an economic value for such products, a sense of place for pastures is argued to be a basis for people’s willingness to take care of and safeguard pastures. This study can be the starting point for further research, especially for investigating how producers actually interact with consumers about biological heritage when selling their products.