Learning Resilience in Local Livestock Breeds from COVID-19 Pandemic

In situ conservation of local breeds requires populations in economically sustainable andresilient production systems. In those countries where the market recognizes the quality of theproducts of local breeds, the traditional relationship between local breeds and products can be usedto improve breed profitability. We analyze sales data from year 2020 of five dairy products associatedwith endangered local breeds farmed in northern Italy, in order to understand the potential resilienceof these production systems, in terms of ability to persist and to adapt to disturbances associatedwith the COVID-19 pandemic. All breed-cheese systems showed good capacity to persist during theCOVID-19 pandemic, with four systems even increasing sales with respect to the period 2017-2019.Three breed-cheese systems showed rapid adaptation to the new conditions by modifying saleschannels, including the introduction of e-commerce.