Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

AGRICULTURE
{non-appoderata) commonly practised in the South. In this case the tenant works
an odd plot o f land rather than a viable podere; no house is provided and the
contract is for one year only. The landowner is often a townsman with httle
interest in the land or the tenant apart from the profits they provide. In much o f
the Mezzogiomo the peasant frequently has a triple rôle; he may be a proprietor
but o f so little land that he is obliged to rent parcels on a mezzadria basis and
perhaps work elsewhere as a labourer.
Over one-third o f Italy’s agricultural and forest land is held in properties
(aziende) o f over 50 hectares, but to be concerned with mere size can be misleading;
obviously 50 hectares in Milan province will yield a very different income
from the same area in the mountain provinces of Aquila, Potenza or Nuoro. Even
among those units with a high proportion o f arable land there is a wide variety o f
farm types. One group engaged in producing cereals, fodder crops, fruit and
animal products on an intensive capitahstic basis is most t5q>ically represented in
the lower Northern Plain, especially in the provinces o f Vercelli, Milan, Pavia,
Piacenza, Cremona, Brescia and Mantua. A small permanent staff is supplemented
by labourers whose earnings now approach those o f their coimterparts
in industry; they are usually accommodated on the farm and their contracts are
on a yearly basis. The standards achieved are high and the capital invested in
building and equipment is comparable with farms in the United Kingdom.
Mechanization has been encouraged by the relaxation o f restrictions whereby
the operator is obhged to employ labour according to the acreage and land-use.
Processing and marketing, often on a co-operative basis, are also better organized
here than elsewhere in Italy. It is significant that despite the vulnerable size o f
many o f the units concerned, there has been no intervention by the land reform
authorities. Although they are somewhat exceptional, eflScient capitalist farms
are also to be found on the Tyrrhenian lowlands o f Tuscany, Lazio and Campania.
In the low-lying zones o f Emilia and Veneto which have been reclaimed over
the last century a rather different type o f large unit may be identified. Usually in
excess o f 200 hectares and often run as a company, it is really an estate concentrating
on the production o f cereals, sugar beet, hemp, vines and fruit. It may be
worked entirely with hired laboiur and machinery but it is common practice for
part o f the property to be entrusted to sharecroppers (compartecipanti) who are
responsible, under the supervision o f the operator, for a few hectares each for a
season or a year; no homestead is available on the holding. With experience the
sharecropper may be promoted to the status and responsibihties o f a share
tenant. It is one o f the misfortunes o f these bonifica zones that the demand for
labour during the reclamation phase could not later be sustained, especially with
the progress o f mechanization. In consequence these areas have a long tradition
of social unrest which has inevitably invited the attention o f the land reform
authorities (p. 143). The Ente Delta has also provided useful work by continuing
reclamation and the lot o f the hired labourer has been improved by legislation,
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