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The End of Sharecropping in Central Italy after 1945: The Role of Mechanisation in the Changing Relationship between Peasant Families and Land

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 September 2014

STUART OGLETHORPE
STUART OGLETHORPE*
Affiliation:
School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, University of Manchester, Samuel Alexander Building, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, [email protected]
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Abstract:

This article focuses on the mechanisation of agriculture in central Italy in the thirty years or so after 1945. This provides a particular way of examining the major changes in the rural landscape in this period, especially the end of the sharecropping system. Land in these regions had for centuries been predominantly farmed under sharecropping contracts, but for political, economic, and demographic reasons this system, which had inhibited modernisation, entered a rapid decline. Whereas labour supply had previously exceeded demand, the reverse became the case, allowing sharecropping families more freedom in how they operated. Mechanisation was not a ‘push’ factor, but as the agricultural labour force contracted it was a necessary response. The article uses individual testimony to illustrate how tenant farmers started to work outside the sharecropping contract, some becoming outside contractors with other farms and supplying tractor hire. The mechanisation of agriculture was slow and uneven, but marked an irreversible change in the relationship between farming families and their land.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 2014 , pp. 243 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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