Agricultural soils – a fundamental common good in urban areas: a strategy for recovering their identity'

Abstract

Good agricultural soils are a scarce and exhaustible resource, essential for providing regular food production to societies and to the idea of sustainability. The protection of these soils is particularly important in Mediterranean landscapes, where there are strong natural and cultural contrasts and the fertility of land is based mostly on human activity. In Portugal, law protects soils since the early 1970s and in 1982 good agricultural soils were classified and safeguarded by law as National Agriculture Reserves (RAN) – non aedificandi – areas particularly suitable for agriculture. Even private land is considered of collective importance, protected by heavy restrictions in use and management. Nevertheless, once land is required for urban development, it is reclassified as urban soil and included in urban areas. The reflection on Common Goods from a Landscape Perspective, leads us to the idea of a functional conversion of agricultural soils in urban areas, sustained in the valorisation of these exceptional resources as productive functions in urban areas. This implies the maintenance of these soils as RAN in urban areas and the development of an evolutionary dynamic, reinforcing the idea of a common good – the return of the best soils to agriculture in urban areas – expressing the ecological, social, historical-cultural and ethic values. It is a request to recreate the notion of common identity based on land, lost in the meantime but possible to recover through the promotion of urban agriculture.