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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.

The search for financial opportunities to promote value creation has been a key topic in the literature concerning geographical indications. In this framework, a relevant set of opportunities is provided by the rural development policy (Rdp) of the European Union. However, access to Rdp is not easy: therefore, value creation through consumption of Rdp is the result of an individual and collective entrepreneurial process within a GI area. This paper intends to look into different adoption strategies of Rdp to promote value creation in a GI food supply chain. Our results confirm, on the one hand, a high-er aptitude to create value through Rdp on behalf of farms working inside GI circuits; on the other hand, empirical analysis evidences a limited set of consumed measures by the farms. This reflects a lost opportunities in terms of value creation.

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.