2026 – A Year Dedicated to Women Farmers, Pastoral Life, and the World’s Rangelands

From the legacy of tradition to a contemporary perspective

Crete can be seen as a living field of experience, where the natural landscape and human activity are continuously interwoven. At the heart of this relationship, the pastoral life of Psiloritis is not merely a survival of the past, but an active way of being. Now officially inscribed in the National Inventory of Cultural Heritage, pastoralism forms a system of knowledge, practices, and values that evolves over time while maintaining a deep connection between people and place.

The crisis of modern livestock farming cannot overshadow this fundamental reality. On the contrary, it highlights the need to redefine our production model—not as a mechanism of opportunistic subsidies, but as a coherent chain of value, knowledge, and performance. 

In this context, 2026 holds special global significance, as it brings together a dual thematic focus: women farmers and pastoral life, along with rangelands—the very spaces where pastoral systems are formed and sustained. This recognition goes beyond production itself. It embraces the broader cultural and social systems that accompany it—where relationships, communities, and ways of life are shaped.

A representative example is the world of Psiloritis. Here, pastoralism forms a complete system: techniques, unwritten rules, forms of cooperation, and everyday practices coexist with a deeper value framework that sustains community cohesion.

The importance of this living system was institutionally recognized in 2021, when it was included in the National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage within the framework of UNESCO. This was not a simple documentation effort, but the outcome of a collective process, supported by the mountain municipalities of Psiloritis, local livestock communities, and regional stakeholders, with the contribution of Androidus, now known as Argastiri. https://ayla.culture.gr/catalogue/i-voskiki-kai-o-kosmos-tou-voskou-ston-psiloreiti-2022/. A key role in continuing this effort is played by the platform ayla.culture.gr, which functions as a living space for documentation and dissemination. There, pastoral life is not presented as a static image, but as a dynamic and evolving system that continues to shape local identities.

In the same direction, the research project IDAology—through the collaboration of the Foundation for Research and Technology, the University of Crete, and the cultural organization Androidus—sought to go beyond documentation. It aimed at a meaningful “translation” of pastoral life into contemporary forms of experience. Digital archives, virtual and augmented reality applications, and an interactive children’s book together create a new field where tradition is reactivated. The everyday life of the shepherd—routes, sounds, and stories—is not simply preserved, but reinterpreted and made accessible to new generations.

Within this global context, the pastoral life of Psiloritis is not just a memory of the past, but a proposition for the future: a living system where tradition, community, and technology are creatively intertwined, opening new paths for understanding place and life.