Reassessing Mediterranean agriculture: Stagnation and growth in Tuscany, 1870-1914

Historical accounts of European economies tend to dismiss the agrarian sector of the Mediterranean basin as "backward" in relation to farming techniques practised in Northern Europe. While there can be no doubt that Mediterranean agrarian techniques differed from those prevailing elsewhere, this difference did not imply backwardness, reflecting instead the constraints imposed by the Mediterranean climate on farming methods. In particular, low summer rainfall in that area constituted a formidable obstacle to the introduction of fodder-based rotations, and therefore to the development of a livestock industry.;A lack of appreciation of this fact has led several historians to rationalize the observed difference in farming techniques between Northern Europe and the central Italian region of Tuscany as stemming from the change-inhibiting impact of that area's tenure system, sharecropping. Arguments put forth in this sense are, however, entirely unconvincing, being internally inconsistent and incompatible with important evidence.;Data derived from the accounts of five Tuscan farms relating to the fifty years before the Great War show that considerable labour productivity gains were possible outside of the fodder-and-livestock model of Northern European "high farming". Based largely on an expansion of viticulture, but resulting in net overall increases, this growth was derived from a modification of field layout, new pruning methods, and the adoption of inorganic fertilizers and sulphate compounds. These data challenge conventional analyses depicting Mediterranean agriculture as stagnant and backward by demonstrating that the Northern European "high farming" model of technical change did not constitute, in the 19th century, the only possible route to increased productivity in agriculture.