Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T20:28:46.605Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Andrews, Richard, A Theatre of Community Memory: Tuscan sharecropping and the Teatro Povero di Monticchiello (Exeter, 1998).Google Scholar
Anselmi, Sergio, ‘Mezzadri e mezzadrie nell’Italia centrale’, in Storia dell’agricoltura italiana in età contemporanea ed. by Piero, Bevilacqua, 3 volumes (Venice, 1990), volume 2, pp. 201–259.Google Scholar
Cardini, Antonio, ed., Il miracolo economico italiano (1958–1963) (Bologna, 2006).Google Scholar
Cascia, Aroldo, and Barbara, Montesi, eds, Dignità conquistata (Ancona, 2003).Google Scholar
Desplanques, Henri, Campagne umbre. Contributo allo studio dei paesaggi rurali dell’Italia centrale, trans. by Alberto Melelli, 2 vols (Perugia, 1975) (originally published in French as Campagnes ombriennes. Contributions à l’etude des paysages rurales en Italie centrale, Paris, 1969).Google Scholar
Formichetti, Aristide, ‘La meccanizzazione in agricoltura’, Rassegna dell’Agricoltura Italiana, 13 (11) (November 1958), 32–34.Google Scholar
ISTAT, 2° Censimento Generale dell’Agricoltura 25 ottobre 1970 (Rome, 1971–72).Google Scholar
Kertzer, David I., Family Life in Central Italy, 1880–1910: Sharecropping, Wage Labor and Coresidence (New Brunwsick, New Jersey, 1984).Google Scholar
Marchetti, Alfiero, ed., Il girotondo dei ricordi. Una finestra sulla Mercatello da ricordare (Mercatello sul Metauro, 2007).Google Scholar
Medici, Giuseppe, ed., La distribuzione della proprietà fondiaria in Italia. Relazione generale, 2 volumes (Rome, 1956).Google Scholar
Ministero dell’Agricoltura e delle Foreste, Piano dodecennale per lo sviluppo dell’agricoltura (Rome, 1953).Google Scholar
Mori, Alberto, La casa rurale nelle Marche settentrionali (Ricerche sulle dimore rurali in Italia, vol. 5) (Florence, 1946).Google Scholar
Pretelli, Sergio, ‘Ferro, chimica e vapore nello sviluppo agricolo’, in Le Marche, ed. by Sergio, Anselmi (Turin, 1987), pp. 561–87.Google Scholar
Sereni, Emilio, Storia del paesaggio agrario italiano (Bari, 1961).Google Scholar
Silverman, Sydel, Three Bells of Civilization: The Life of an Italian Hill Town (New York, 1975).Google Scholar
Snowden, Frank M., The Fascist Revolution in Tuscany 1919–1922 (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar
Tiberi, Silvano, ed., La civiltà che sudava. Memoria e lavoro nel Montefeltro e dintorni tra gli anni ’30 e gli anni ’50 (Rome, 2007).Google Scholar