Institutional portal - Municipality of Milan

The Milanese Agricultural District is a rural district characterized by a homogeneous historical and territorial identity deriving from the integration between agricultural activities and other local activities, as well as from the production of particularly specific goods or services, consistent with the traditions and vocations of the territory.

The district scenario is aimed at enhancing Milanese agriculture, understood as a network of collaboration between local authorities and companies located near the built-up city and which have developed productive and multifunctional activities in close relationship with it.

It is a method of agriculture which, by virtue of physical proximity, maintains links of interdependence and mutual collaboration with the city, not only of production but also of service.

Within the Milanese Rural Agricultural District, the DAM Consortium (Milan Agricultural District Consortium) was established in 2011, bringing together the most representative agricultural companies overall in terms of areas operated in the municipal territory.

The DAM Consortium, an agricultural cooperative consortium company, is made up of more than thirty agricultural companies located in the Milan area. These account for approximately 40% of Milan's agricultural territory for a cultivated area of ​​approximately 1.155 hectares. The work of the DAM Consortium contributes to the landscape-environmental redevelopment and the valorisation of the heritage of farmhouses and business centres.

On 14-01-2015 Lombardy Region, Municipality of Milan, Province of Milan (now Metropolitan City), District Company of the Milan Rural District - DAM Consortium, District Company of the Rural-River District of the Olona River Valley - DAVO Consortium, District companies of the Neorural District of the Three Waters of Milan - DINAMO Consortium, District companies of the "Riso e Rane" Rural District - "Riso e Rane" Consortium have signed the Territorial Development Framework Agreement (AQST) "Milano Metropoli Rural" . The main purpose of this document is the consolidation of the governance of the process of strengthening the rural matrix of the urban settlement to allow the achievement of the objectives set out in the Memorandum of Understanding of 3 May 2012.
In line with the guiding principles and development strategies of the Institutions, as well as with the general objective of consolidating the rural matrix of the Milanese metropolitan urban settlement, the AQST pursues the following objectives:

• strengthen rural systems in the metropolitan area as a strategy to contain land consumption and as an operational method to define a balanced model of economic development that is sustainable from an environmental point of view;
• contribute to sustainable development thanks to the integration of the production system with multifunctional activities that are sustainable for the environment and capable of satisfying - at least partially - the demand for food, energy, natural resources and well-being;
• support forms of diversification of agricultural activity that can broaden the perspective of traditional agricultural production to also respond to the new needs of the city, creating synergies with other economic sectors and consequent market opportunities, in particular through the support of competitive agricultural activity in able to combine traditional production with a more comprehensive ecosystem redevelopment;
• contribute to the containment of potential degradation and to the landscape-environmental regeneration and redevelopment, in its broadest sense, in order to achieve objectives of protection and enhancement of common goods (water, soil, biodiversity, landscape);
• consolidation and enhancement of the peculiarities of the urban-rural territory through methods of connection between urban and rural areas such as blue-green infrastructure, aimed at integrating urban and extra-urban realities with the aim of increasing the resilience and biodiversity of ecosystems and giving back to the inhabitants not only work spaces, but also use spaces that contribute to an improvement in the quality of life and contribute to identification and belonging to a territory.

For more information visit the Lombardy Region website - Milan Rural Metropolis