Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

PART i: SOME GEOGRAPHY AND HISTORY
presented a problem. Despite a surprising variety of fodder crops, which included
clover, lucerne (introduced from Persia via Greece), beans, pulses, peas and
lupins, as well as hay and tree leaves, the difficulty o f providing fodder all the
year in a Mediterranean climate limited severely the amount o f stock on the farm.
The widespread practice o f transhumance was no answer as the vital manure was
lost to the corn lands. On the better farms, folding, the spreading o f wood ash,
liming, marling and the ploughing in o f green crops and compost was practised
to some extent, and the growth o f legumes must have helped to maintain fertility,
but the development o f systematic rotations had to wait many centuries. In the
north the fodder problem was easier because o f the cultivation o f water-meadows
and the feeding o f barley and spelt to stock. The need for draught animals (and
incidentally manure) was met by the ox, mule and horse, although the hoe was
as important as the plough even on big farms. Horses were more important
militarily than agricultiurally, and those o f Venetia, Apulia and the Reate Basin
were in great demand. As mentioned above, large-scale cattle and sheep rearing
became a feature o f Roman Italy, particularly in the southern Peninsula, Emiha
and central Sicily, and the same areas had the largest concentration o f goats. The
evil reputation o f the latter where trees were concerned was realized by Varro,
who recommends owners to forbid goat-grazing on their tenants’ land in the
interests o f saplings. The Italian pig very largely fended for itself in the chestnut
and oak forests and was very important in the North.
The agricultural malaise, whose symptoms had been recognized as far back as
the Gracchi, became steadily worse imder the Empire. The free labourer and free
proprietor became increasingly rare as economic pressure continued and as the
declining birth rate made itself felt among the poorer classes. The government
found itself in the position o f having to maintain a policy with contradictory aims.
On the one hand pohtical and social necessity demanded the continued import
o f cheap grain, which was the very policy which had helped to eliminate the free
peasant and encourage the spread o f latiflmdia and the disastrous switch to
large-scale animal rearing. Even the important exports o f oil and wine had
declined in the face o f provincial production and in the absence o f a mercantile
poUcy in favour of the Italian grower. On the other hand it was widely reahzed
that the health o f Italy and the Empire depended on the protection o f what was
left o f the small farming class and on the maintenance o f agricultural production
at a high level in case of a disruption o f the overseas grain supply. Even the big
estates were feeling the pinch because o f the difficulty o f obtaining free labour and
the increasing expensiveness o f slave labour. As long ago as the first century BC
Varro had advocated a policy o f allowing landless freemen to squat on small plots
o f the estate in order to have on hand a permanent supply o f labour. Under the
later Empire this policy became general, the only difference being that, in the
absence o f adequate free squatters, slaves were freed on the understanding that
they remained on the estate. Under Constantine the freeman squatter was finally
tied to the land and forced to pay his rent in kind and in labour, and so a system
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