The assessment of the contribution of multifunctional role play by agriculture to the territorial and local identity in its complexity needs a combination of approaches in a shorter timeframe. The present paper is illustrating the case of Castelnuovo di Garfagnana in Italy. Literature analysis (Content analysis of articles, journals, books and use of internet) and survey data using Rapid Rural Appraisal (RRA) have been applied in height farmers’ cases for this purpose in July 2011. With a preconceive check-list and a dimensional frame of analysis, field work was done with three groups of five interviewers, each with different background and experience. By combining the dimensions of RRA in the study such as triangulation of techniques (interviews, observations from field visits and narrative telling), learning from and with the rural people, learning rapidly and progressively (with exploration, flexibility, opportunism, improvisation, iteration, and cross‐checking), informations have been gathered basically with focus on qualitative data. Also, reference has been directed to Chambers (1994) which stress that farm and village surveys are part of the four main areas where RRA generates numerical data or insights which can be compared with those from questionnaire surveys or others standard sources. The main findings have been reported to four functions derived from agriculture in relation to territorial and local identity of Garfagnana. These are: white function (Sales and processing farm products, food security and safety), Green function (Landscape, biodiversity and environment), Yellow function (Employment and income generation, tourism and recreation, green care and cultural heritage), and Red function (Energy production and technology innovation employing winds, plant woods, and biofuels).