Considering its orography (altitudes between 100 and 300m), soil characteristics (predominantly poor and shallow shale soils) and weather (typically Mediterranean), the Castro Verde region (also locally known as Campo Branco) is since bygone times related to the raising of cattle and afterwards to dryland cereal farming (without resorting to irrigation).

To better take advantage of the soil, this agricultural and cattle raising practice evolved into a traditional scheme of plot rotation in which the land is left fallow for three or more years after two years of cereal crops in order to regain fertility while serving as pasture to livestock (particularly sheep and cows).

Nowadays the wide Castro Verde plain is dominated by open continuous fields where cereal fields (dryland cereal) and fallow lands (serving as natural pastures) prevail. This agricultural matrix is only occasionally interrupted by old olive groves and new vineyards, small patches of holm oak montado, pockets of natural vegetation (mainly bushes of gum rockrose) and freshwater wetland areas (intermittent water courses, temporary ponds, small dams, weirs and fens).

On the whole, these elements form a unique landscape unit that as for long “hidden” a living world perfectly adapted to the ecological characteristics of the land and to the human activities taking place in it: the Castro Verde cereal steppe.

Due to its conservation condition and its size, the Castro Verde cereal steppe is the largest and most important cereal plain area in Portugal, also being one of the most representative of the Iberian Peninsula and of Europe.