Politiche per il distretto del pomodoro da industria e prospettive di gestione delle risorse idriche

The geographical concentration in a limited area of agricultural firms highly specialized in tomato industry, with presence of inter-firms relations based on co-operation and common interests, are the basic conditions for the development of a district. Since the water resource represents a critical factor for this industry, it follows that the development of the district requires also some specific water management policies. The present paper is an attempt to analyze the role of water management policies towards the development of a district for tomato production, referred to the Foggia province (Italy). Firstly, we adopted a SWOT analysis, for finding the most critical issues affecting the tomato sector. Secondly we adopted a SOR (Strategic Orientation) analysis, in order to find the most suitable strategy able to enhance the local economic development. According to our results, the tomato sector is facing some weakness, that can be overcome through the development in the same area of processing firms., the establishment of educational programs to overcome the insufficient entrepreneurial skills and atmosphere, the enhancement of innovation aimed at water saving and processing technologies. This type of district is also highly depending on regional policies for the infrastructural enhancement (logistics, transportations and networking).Water policies are found to play a key role, since the development of the district is highly depending on the status of water infrastructures and the regional water regional management policy.