Abstract

The food industry is one of the most important sectors of national industry. The big food industry is present in part also in Southern Italy, but this has not always resulted in the formation of an industrial supply chain. In those regions, the agro-industrial sector is therefore now made up mostly of small firms in various branches of food industry. In recent years, in order to reinforce small business structures, some projects aimed at supporting activities of partnership between firms and local institutions were included in Rural Development Plans. The case of Basilicata is one example. This region hosts several large Italian and foreign food companies, but more extensively a factory of small food business with impact on employment in part similar to that of larger companies. The development of food industry is affected, however, by some constraints related to the absence of industrial suppliers and to the general difficulty to build a supply chain able to increase the local agricultural production value. At the same time, small firms continue to suffer for problems connected to their associative nature and the promotion of their products, with clear limits on national and international markets.