From a socioeconomic perspective, the bioeconomy is conceived as the sustainable management of biological resources rooted in the territory, rather than as a technological or industrial paradigm. In artisanal and local agri-food systems, the bioeconomy mobilizes locally available biological assets (Zúñiga-González, 2013; Menéndez Gámiz et al., 2025).

In this sense, practices commonly described as traditional or artisanal do not precede or exist outside of the bioeconomy; rather, they constitute functional bioeconomic arrangements. Agroecological management, low-input livestock systems, organic matter recycling, and the artisanal transformation of local products into value-added foods are expressions of the bioeconomy in action (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013; Vallejo-Rojas et al., 2016; Arifin et al., 2025). In the case of quesillo, actions such as preserving and using local microbiota, along with local forage and water management, transform biological specificity into economic value, positioning the product as a biocultural asset rather than a standardized dairy product (Dargère et al., 2023; Martínez-Martínez et al., 2024).

Complementarily, resilience is conceived as the socioeconomic capacity through which this bioeconomic base sustains livelihoods and food security under stressful conditions. This is a dynamic process, shaped by local actors’ capacity to absorb disruptions, adapt production practices, and, in certain contexts, transform value-creation methods over time (Béné et al., 2012, 2016).

From this perspective, bioeconomic diversification first strengthens absorptive capacity by reducing dependence on external inputs, markets, and resources (Fusté-Forné, 2021; Torres-Salcido and Cornejo-Oviedo, 2018). Second, artisanal processing and diversification of dairy products strengthen adaptive capacity in the face of price volatility and supply disruptions (Bermejo Asensio et al., 2021; Reyes-Chávez et al., 2021; Belliggiano et al., 2024). Finally, emerging origin-based strategies—such as territorial marketing or gastronomic tourism—enable transformative capacity by shaping value-generating mechanisms linked to primary production (Belmin et al., 2022; Spilioti et al., 2023; de Nñez-Rodríguez and Zuniga-Gonzalez, 2024; Zocchi et al., 2024).

Rather, it argues that bioeconomic resilience provides an analytical framework for explaining why territorially rooted artisanal systems persist, adapt, and, in some cases, transform under structural constraints. In this sense, bioeconomics clarifies the material and biological foundations through which traditional systems continue to generate sustainability, economic viability, and territorial stability.

In agricultural and food economics, territory means a system of governance that connects physical and cultural spaces with how local resources are managed, how geographical indications are used, and how value chains are controlled. This approach means that governance structures define where products come from, set rules for fair value distribution, and help protect biological resources from being standardized worldwide.

In this context, territorial governance is not a centralized or vertical structure, but rather operates through polycentric governance mechanisms (Béné et al., 2016; Sánchez-Soriano et al., 2024). These mechanisms consist of multiple overlapping decision-making centers—such as family units, local producer associations, and traditional uses and customs, among others—that coordinate to manage shared resources. From an institutional bioeconomy perspective, this polycentricity acts as the system’s control center, ensuring that the management of biological assets is distributed among those who truly sustain the territory (Reyes-Chávez et al., 2021).

Adopting a polycentric approach avoids the rigidity often associated with centralized models. For resilience to be both effective and equitable, it must be underpinned by institutions that facilitate local action (Béné et al., 2016; Menéndez Gámiz et al., 2025; de Nñez-Rodríguez and Zuniga-Gonzalez, 2024). Polycentric governance offers the institutional flexibility required for adaptive and transformative capacities, enabling local actors to establish their own rules for product naming and value distribution without reliance on external validation. This decentralized control prevents the bioeconomy from becoming extractive and instead ensures sovereignty within the value chain, maintaining the artisan as the primary decision-maker.

These polycentric mechanisms are therefore essential for territorial food security. By distributing power across multiple local nodes, the system ensures that the economic benefits of quesillo production are not monopolized by a single intermediary. This arrangement guarantees stable economic access to food for producer households (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013; Vallejo-Rojas et al., 2016).

The literature search was conducted using the Scopus database. The following search equation was applied: ALL (“cheese”) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ((“local food system” OR “agri-food system”)) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY ((“resilience” OR governance)) AND (LIMIT-TO (DOCTYPE, “ar”))*.

From the initial search, a corpus of 51 scientific articles published between 2002 and 2025 was compiled through analytical reading of titles, abstracts, and full texts. Selection prioritized studies that: (i) address cheese or artisanal dairy products from a territorial perspective; (ii) analyze local agri-food systems, alternative food networks, territorialized local agri-food markets, or related approaches; (iii) explicitly address governance, resilience, collective action, or sustainability, and provide conceptual or empirical insights useful for comparative and analytical interpretation rather than direct empirical characterization of the quesillo system.

No geographic restrictions were applied, as the objective was not empirical generalization but the identification of recurring conceptual frameworks and structural tensions relevant to artisanal agri-food resilience.

The corpus analysis was organized around two cross-cutting analytical dimensions. The first addresses structural tensions associated with standardization and regulation processes, power asymmetries along agri-food value chains, and conflicts between economic efficiency, productive diversity, and territorial sustainability.

The second dimension examines how these structural tensions simultaneously generate resilience dynamics related to collective action, local governance arrangements, and the valorization of biocultural heritage. Together, these dimensions allowed the identification of recurring patterns, theoretical convergences, and analytical gaps in the literature.

The quesillo agri-food system faces structural challenges due to production scale, the spread-out nature of producers, and their visibility to institutions. Administrative records from the National Statistical Directory of Economic Units (DENUE, 2025) only partially reflect the quesillo sector, as family-based artisanal activities are frequently underreported. These figures should be interpreted as reference points rather than a full representation, revealing two key features: the system is highly fragmented, made up mostly of micro and small producers, and there is a gap between the cultural-economic importance of quesillo and its limited recognition by institutions.

Many local families have long depended on artisanal quesillo for their livelihoods; however, in official records, it is grouped with general dairy products, diluting its territorial specificity and symbolic value. This external institutional tension extends beyond administrative matters and reveals gaps in governance and coordination within local agri-food systems. However, this gap is actively managed by local producers, underscoring the need for collective action and shared learning to maintain value and protect producers’ roles in the supply chain (Pachoud et al., 2019; Edelmann et al., 2020). When strong recognition systems are missing, products are often treated as generic goods, making it hard to turn a region’s reputation into economic stability.

From a resilience perspective, this tension generates both constraints and enabling conditions. Low institutional visibility reduces access to collective tools for differentiation, coordinated marketing, and bargaining power, increasing producers’ exposure to value capture by external intermediaries. Conversely, small-scale organization and flexible labor arrangements strengthen absorptive capacity, allowing households to maintain production and income flows under shock conditions. This suggests that the system survives not because it fits the industrial market, but because it creates territorial solutions that value its unique biological and cultural assets (Béné et al., 2012; Muirhead and Campbell, 2012; Belliggiano et al., 2024; Borodina et al., 2024).

From a territorial perspective, the benefits generated by this local agency have a direct impact on economic stability and local food security. While fragmented production increases dependence on middlemen, the persistence of artisanal practices ensures steady cash flow for producing families.

A key issue in the system is aligning artisanal production methods with contemporary food safety regulations, which often conflict with traditional practices. The main challenge is to keep the cheese safe to eat while preserving its identity as a fresh, raw-milk cheese, hand-stretched (Dargère et al., 2023; Silva-Paz et al., 2020; Martínez-Martínez et al., 2024).

However, this tension is managed through local producers’ initiatives, which rely on empirical knowledge and localized risk management. Some internal indicators of the process include reducing the time between milking and processing, cleaning utensils, and managing water quality (Zuniga-Gonzalez, 2025). By prioritizing these locally adapted practices, producers activate an adaptive capacity (Béné et al., 2012) that ensures food safety without altering the nature of the cheese. These actions demonstrate that artisanal production and food safety are complementary when the specific biological conditions of the territory are recognized.

The adaptive resilience of local actors is demonstrated through informal governance and collective learning on hygiene and process control, enabling producers to sustain production continuity. These practices help prevent the agri-food system from being supplanted by standardized industrial models that primarily benefit large processors and economies of scale.

Regulatory challenges are made worse by market pressures from the rise of analog cheeses, which use vegetable fats instead of traditional dairy ingredients. These products mainly compete on price, weakening quesillo’s territorial identity. This leads to unfair competition and weakens the link between quality, origin, and value (Lambarraa-Lehnhardt et al., 2021; Spilioti et al., 2023). To stay resilient, producers need to move beyond price competition by highlighting biocultural identity, which is the unique mix of local culture and natural resources used in production (Rytkönen, 2016; Guareschi et al., 2020). They can also use gastronomic tourism to differentiate their product.

Therefore, the tensions affecting these actors are linked to individual economic stability and collective food security in different ways. Artisanal producers feel pressure from industry-sanitary rules, which raise their costs and increase the risk of penalties. These rules often force changes that threaten the traditional way quesillo is made (Dargère et al., 2023; Reyes-Chávez et al., 2021). On the other hand, intermediaries and large processors benefit from standardized regulations that enable them to operate more efficiently.

Collectively, these dynamics indicate that the modernization of food safety governance may undermine producers’ economic resilience and local food security if territorial and productive specificities are not acknowledged. In the end, the persistence of artisanal practices ensures a steady cash flow and territorial stability, turning these very tensions into a defensive mechanism for stronger local food systems.

Ecological conditions and economic profitability do not always evolve in the same direction. Decreasing forage availability, water scarcity, and soil degradation or salinization increase production costs and reduce producers’ profit margins. Many producers, faced with this scenario, resort to purchasing external inputs, primarily animal feed. As a result, some producers intensify their systems, while others abandon the activity altogether (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013; Romo-Bacco et al., 2022).

This tension can be illustrated by environmental and economic indicators commonly used in comparative assessments of small-scale dairy systems and agri-food sustainability, such as: (i) the availability and quality of local forage; (ii) access to and management of water; (iii) the degree of dependence on external inputs; (iv) production costs and profit margins; and (v) the capacity of producers to sustain or abandon the activity in the face of environmental pressures (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013; Romo-Bacco et al., 2022). In this study, these indicators function as analytical references rather than direct measurements, situating the quesillo system within broader regional patterns of agro-environmental stress.

Likewise, sustainability assessments of peasant farming systems in the central highlands indicate that the economic dimension is often the most fragile, mainly due to reliance on purchased inputs. In contrast, practices based on local resources, such as grazing, manure recycling, and the use of agricultural waste, tend to improve overall system performance without requiring costly technological investments (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013), and increasingly adopted in recent analyses of territorialized agri-food resilience and sustainability (Bermejo Asensio et al., 2021).

In the Etla region, producers use several strategies, such as rotating pastures, managing organic matter, making better use of water and shade, and relying on local forages. These methods are also seen in other small-scale dairy systems. They help maintain milk quality and reduce the need for outside feed (Fadul-Pacheco et al., 2013; Belliggiano et al., 2024). This approach fits with systems transition theory, which values gradual, knowledge-based changes over simply replacing technology in rural areas (Vallejo-Rojas et al., 2016).

Still, using sustainable practices does not always help producers recover financially. When markets do not reward these efforts, families end up paying the extra costs. In Mexico, small producers struggle to benefit from environmentally friendly practices because there is little product differentiation and trade is unbalanced (Romo-Bacco et al., 2022). In Oaxaca, there are no territorial seals, basic tracking systems, or clear information about the origins of products. Without these, prices become uniform, quesillo is treated as a basic commodity, and there is less motivation to use sustainable methods (Reyes-Chávez et al., 2021). Territorial diversification, such as gastronomic tourism and quesillo routes, can help diversify the region and increase producer incomes while strengthening their identity.

An additional tension inherent in the quesillo agri-food system lies between preserving its agri-food heritage and meeting the demands of competitiveness in open markets. This tension operates on two interrelated levels. In terms of governance, the absence of clear regulations regarding the use of the name “quesillo,” the lack of verifiable territorial standards, and weak control mechanisms enable the appropriation of heritage without guaranteeing sovereignty for artisanal producers within the value chain. In the market, the absence of recognizable origin and quality indicators prevents the product’s cultural value from enhancing its competitive position.

The explicit link between territory and geographical indications is essential here; these are not merely legal labels but collective governance mechanisms that enable producers to exclude imitations and capture the value inherent in their biocultural assets. Without this institutional shield, the territory remains vulnerable to the external appropriation of its heritage, directly undermining value chain sovereignty (Edelmann et al., 2020; Tan et al., 2024).

Oaxacan quesillo faces increasing competitive pressure from imitation cheeses made with vegetable fats or lower-quality ingredients, which are marketed at similar prices despite substantial differences in production costs and quality attributes. When price formation does not reflect origin, production methods, or quality standards, market signals fail to reward artisanal practices, discouraging producers who maintain traditional processes and higher sanitary and environmental standards (Reyes-Chávez et al., 2021; Romo-Bacco et al., 2022). This dynamic mirrors broader patterns identified in agri-food value chain transformations, where the absence of territorial standards or differentiated quality schemes leads to price convergence and erodes small-scale producers’ capacity to capture value, even when quality differentials exist (Minten and Reardon, 2008; Reardon and Timmer, 2014).

From a resilience perspective, this tension opens pathways to transformative capacity as producers seek alternatives that do not rely solely on price competition. Other regions show that mobilizing biocultural identity through cheese routes, gastronomic tourism, and heritage-based food initiatives can strengthen differentiation, reinforce territorial recognition, and improve income distribution when adequate coordination, information, and governance mechanisms are in place. These strategies allow heritage to function not only as cultural preservation but as an economic asset embedded in the territory(Béné et al., 2012, 2016; Magri-Harsich et al., 2024).

Quesillo’s value is not just about sales; it is also deeply tied to old traditions, knowledge passed down through generations, and a long relationship with the land. To turn this heritage into a real advantage, there need to be special rules —specifically geographical indications or origin-based quality schemes—that protect its identity, recognize the work of producers, and show buyers where it comes from, instead of making it all the same. Without these rules, heritage could become just a slogan, unable to help the system’s economic and regional future (Vallejo-Rojas et al., 2016; Dargère et al., 2023; Martínez-Martínez et al., 2024).