Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

PART IV : E C O N O M I C G E O G R A P H Y
internal movements now in progress are revolutionary and irrevocable; they have
already raised many pressing problems in housing and education and in readjustment
to new social environments. One wonders what the long-term consequences
will be on the national character, on regional sentiment and on family
ties and other accepted social loyalties.
A G R IC U L T U R E
At the risk o f some repetition it may be useful to summarize here the essential
characteristics o f Italian agriculmre. Until 1918 Italy was overwhelmingly an
agricultural country and as late as 1940 the majority o f Italians depended, directly
or indirectly, on the land for their livelihood, so restricted in scale and so geographically
localized was Italian industry. The rôle o f agriculture was to provide
a steadily increasing population with the basic foodstuffs (bread, pasta, oil, wine,
vegetables, fruit and, on a modest scale, animal products) and at the same time
provide some sort o f useful work for the greatest number o f people. T o this end
agriculture was both protected and subsidized in various ways, and during the
fascist period an attempt was made, with a fair measure o f success, to achieve
self-sufficiency in the basic foodstuffs. It may be argued that, given the political
and economic climate o f the 1930s, there was no alternative to this policy, but
there is no doubt that it encouraged an excessive emphasis on wheat production,
maintained land under the plough which should have been used otherwise, and
sacrificed productivity to the demands o f total production. In the last decade the
pressures which previously shaped the character o f Italian agriculture have
slackened somewhat and it should now be possible to put more emphasis on
efficiency with the object o f catering for the changing needs o f an increasingly
affluent urban population and at the same time export more o f those products
for whose production Italy has climatic advantages (fruit, early vegetables, etc.).
In this respect Italy’s membership o f the Common Market, while presenting an
opportvmity, also underlines the urgency o f achieving the necessary reorientation.
In 1901 9’5 million Italians, some 60% o f the active labour force, were engaged
in agriculture; in 1963 the comparable figures were 5-3 million and 27% (table
6). In most o f the South the percentage employed on the land is still about 40,
while in much o f the North the figure has fallen to 20. Although it may result
locally in some loss o f production (e.g. in the specialized wine districts of Piedmont)
this is a welcome trend which will eventually make possible more competitive
forms o f production based on viable holdings and modern methods.
A t the moment there is a very great variety in the size and type o f farm and
in the tenure under which they are worked.^ H alf o f Italy’s productive area and
^Tables 8 and 9 attempt to summarize the land-use, form of operation and the degree of
fragmentation in certain selected provinces chosen to illustrate the situation in the Alps
(Bolzano); various sectors of the Northern Plain (Cremona, Padua, Ferrara); Liguria
(Savona); the Sub-Apennines and Anti-Apennines (Arezzo and Siena); the central
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