Structural Changes and the Role of Districts in the Development of the Italian Food Industry

In the first section of this chapter, we outline the general characteristcs of the Italian food industry and its structural changes between 1981 and 2001. The processes of concentration and specialization of the food industry at the regional and provincial levels for the main sub-sectors are analysed in the second section. In the third section, the ID approach is used to analyse the strucutural characteristics and processing, fruit and vegetables, and the dairy industry). Finally, we present our main conclusions.