The role of peri-urban agriculture in the pandemic era

The relationship between agriculture, territory and the city has always been an object of interest for legislators due to the multiplicity of factors involved. In this paper some reflections are made on the new functions of peri-urban agriculture. The premise being that the rural landscape cannot be separated from the analysis of production factor needs. The control mechanisms of landscape variation, therefore, should take into account the main local features and the needs of the most recent phenomena. Often, however, the new land uses occurred through the progressive erosion of rural space from its original agricultural purposes. The logic behind this dismissing the loss of rural space in quantitative terms and, above all, in qualitative terms. The needs of the new panorama, which saw us forced to live with the pandemic that afflicted us in recent years, can, however, also be an interesting opportunity to improve agricultural development models, especially in suburban areas. This paper compares the opportunities offered by the European framework with its new tools and the local regional contexts that constitute the Italian panorama.