Re-localisation of food, re-qualification of places and landscape protection:A case study from the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano, Italy.

This paper discusses the complex interrelations between the quality of food and places, and landscape protection. The growing interest for the re-localisation of food is accompanied by an increased awareness that the food system is a strategic point of view to understand and direct the determinants of development at global as well as regional and local levels, entailing economic, social and environmental benefits. By exploring these issues, the paper offers an analysis of the web-marketing strategies of a group of farms located within the Parco Agricolo Sud Milano (IT) and certified through the Environmental Quality Mark, in order to test if and how they create a link between quality of places and quality of food, and which values they use to explain this link. The analysis confirms the role of the mark in promoting a reconnection between food and its place of production, i.e. the Park, as well as supporting the diffusion of environmental values and the development and attractiveness of the area. The paper highlights how the integration of multifunctional agriculture and values typical of alternative economic spaces into spatial planning and landscape preservation could be a good instrument for policy makers in order to lay the foundations for the development of both new environmental-oriented food policies and sustainable agricultural landscape planning