Eating Together: Food and Conviviality in Utopian Communities

Despite its small landmass, Portugal has a diverse agricultural sector due to varied climatic and topographic characteristics. Sustainability and hydric resilience are the two biggest aims of agricultural development in Portugal today and these subjects cross the landscape of agricultural development, choices and general trends leading to changes in the production and products and further spreading the culture of the "Montado". The harsh conditions that characterize the south of Portugal facilitates the development of this traditional agro-silvo-pastoral ecosystem, called Montado, which is a combination of livestock breeding on pastures and agriculture in a low-density forest area. The tree population consists mainly of cork oak and holm oak (Quercus Suber and Quercus Rotundifolia). As a cultural landscape, the cork forest of Montado is a savannah-like woodland required existence, and it is part of the tentative list of Portugal in order to qualify for inclusion in the World Heritage List of UNESCO. According to UNESCO, the Montado system occupies "a significant part of the Alentejo region, large areas of the Tagus Valley and of Beira Baixa Interior, as well as the mountain ranges of Algarve (Serra Algarvia). It is believed that 60% of Portugal avifauna biodiversity depends on this unique habitat which supports rare species as the Iberian lynx (reintroduced near Mertola, in the south) or the royal eagle.