How Living Heritage relates to Alpine Food? Evidence from the Entremont Region (Switzerland)

Recently, the Alps have been experiencing new social phenomena, as a return to agriculture. In this context, the alpine food heritage has been reconsidered after a period of neglection, and is now under application to UNESCO Register of good safeguarding practices in the frame of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. This paper reflects on a specific case study, the cultivation of red berries in the Entremont region (Switzerland), in the light of an action-research at the Centre régional d'études des populations alpines (CREPA) in Sembrancher (Switzerland), also financed by the Interreg project Living ICH - Cross-border governance instruments for the safeguarding and valorization of the Living Intangible Heritage. The extent of the red berries from the 1930s to the 1990s shows the importance of this cultivation for the local economy in the last century. Nowadays, there are few evidences of the red berries, due to the preponderance of the meadows used for mowing but, after several decades of abandonment, a reconsideration of the cultural, social and economic values of these berries seems to be in order.