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The paper deals with the support system of geographical indications (GIs): more precisely, it aims at investigating the territorial dynamics of the rural knowledge, by analysing the role of agricultur al extension systems (AES) as tool to support farm’s management and innovation in GI areas. By putting forward a milieu innovateur approach, we intend to verify eventual differences between GI and not GI farms in knowledge transfer and innovation adoption. Interaction and learning logics at the basis of this approach confirm differences even though with some exception based on territorial characteristics and models of AES governance.

Policy for agricultural extension services (AES) has been revitalized during the last phases of rural development policies (2007/2013), to empower human capital in agriculture. A wider package of measures aiming at improving the supply of extension at farm level is foreseen and financial resources have been allocated in all Italian regions, to strengthen the measures. The paper aims at testing whether such a high proportion of funding match high levels of utilization of services on behalf of the farms. By assimilating farmers to consumers of AES, the analysis proposes a classification of the farms on the basis of their propensity to consume services.