Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

PART III: REGIONAL G E O G R A P H Y
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Basilicata, the Bradano trench, is scarcely more rewarding. A succession of rivers
(Bradano, Basento, Cavone, Agri, etc.) have carved the predominantly clayey
infilling into a succession o f rounded ridges whose unstable flanks are extensively
fretted by calanchi. Locally, where Pliocene and Quaternary sands and conglomerates
have survived, the interfluves assume a tabular form. The debrisfilled
valley floors, laced with braided channels, are extensively denied the cultivator
because o f their liability to disastrous flooding. Along the G ulf o f Taranto,
behind a chaotic barrier o f low dunes, the rivers have built up a continuous strip
o f alluvial flats from which human settlement was banished by malaria for some
fifteen hundred years. T h is strip is now being colonized under the land reform;
the Bradano has been dammed to form a large reservoir and the other rivers are
being similarly controlled. Many o f the new poderi are irrigated so that citrus
fruit, sugar beet, early vegetables and tobacco can be grown as well as the usual
dry Mediterranean crops. The interior uplands of the Bradano trench offer little
scope for improvement. Traditionally a latifondo stronghold, much o f the area is
still held in large properties worked from masserie} Towards the Murge, however,
the dominance o f wheat and sheep in the land-use is relieved by arboriculture,
particularly where Quaternary sands cover the down-faulted terraces o f the
western Murge.
The small isolated volcanic zone o f M . Vulture (1327m) has much in common
with Roccamonfina; it is similarly composed o f basaltic lavas and tuffs, is capped
by chestnuts and is flanked by vines and tree crops supporting a relatively dense
population. A n outer rim encloses two small crater lakes.
With the exception o f those few more fortunate areas noted above, Basilicata
presents the Southern environment at its worst - a hilly or mountainous terrain
developed on unstable impermeable rocks whose surface is rapidly wasting away,
worn-out soils, a rainfall unreliable and often destructively violent, rivers dry
half the year but often raging torrents in winter. With a population density of
only 65 per sq km most o f Basilicata is overpopulated. The peasantry, concentrated
in squalid isolated villages, lacks land, capital and useful work. Emigration
overseas is an old tradition here but the internal drift from the land is less
marked than in many other Southern regions (between 1951 and 1961 the
population fell by only 2-4%). I f it were possible to introduce a more rational
system o f land-use, the majority o f Basilicata would be restored to forest leaving
only those areas under cultivation which are capable o f sustained improvement.
T o an inadequate degree this is taking place with the drift o f population from the
uplands and the concentration o f activity on the reclaimed coastlands. The problem
o f rural overpopulation is aggravated by the lack o f industrial advantages;
agricultural processing and constructional materials were the only sectors represented
tmtil recently. The only notable raw material is the gas o f the newly
developed Ferrandina field; part o f its output goes to Bari but part (thanks less to
* In 1961 properties of over 50 hectares occupied respectively 50% and 42% of the
agricultural and forest land in Matera and Potenza provinces.
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