The Rationality of Rural Life

Jeff Pratt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317991700
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Kommunikationswissenschaften

First published in 2004. The river Orcia flows westwards out of a majestic valley in central Italy, cuts a ravine through the northern flanks of Monte Amiata, and descends through rolling hills to the coastal plain, the Maremma. On its upper reaches, a thousand years ago, the first farms regulated by the mezzadria contract were created, a share-cropping system which established a stable farm population in the countryside, with half the produce going to an urban landlord class. There were some variations in its organization, and when in the 19th century the mezzadria was finally established on the hills and newly drained swamps of the Maremma the farms were much more commercially oriented and grouped into very large estates. The collapse of the mezzadria also created major fractures in rural society. The three main theoretical issues with which this book is concerned- capitalist agriculture, technological change and rationality.

APPENDIX 1
Statistical Material for Family Farming Sector

All statistics are given using Italian measurements. At the time of fieldwork there were approximately 2,200 lire to the £ sterling. There are 2.47 acres to a hectare (ha); a quintale (ql) is 100 kilos, 10 quintali is roughly a ton.

A) FARM SIZE AND INCOME

To calculate the average size of farms in the Montenero and Porrona districts I have eliminated from the total 3 farms at Montenero over 100 hectares which are run partly or entirely with wage-labour, and all those below 5 hectares. This leaves a total of 140 farms, covering 3,846 hectares, with an average of 27.4 hectares. The average for the whole comune of Cinigiano is only 17 hectares. Figures provided by the service co-ops indicate that roughly 70% is arable (average 19 hectares), the rest is permanent pasture, woodland, olives and vines. Of the 140 farms considered 15 (11%) were under 15 hectares (though unregistered divisions would increase this figure) whilst 107 (76%) fell in the range 15-40 hectares.

Estimates for 1968 (Wade 1971: 128) showed that cereals provided 42% of sales receipts, wine 27%, olive oil 17%, livestock 14% (though this in a bad year). In 1987 on one of the farms which still practised mixed agriculture, my own estimates for sales receipts showed 52% for cattle, (a stall with 18 head) 19%. for olive oil and 29% for grain. No forage was sold since it was also used for livestock, wine and all other products were strictly for home consumption. The deduction of production costs would considerably change these proportions. A more typical farm which by 1987 had lost all its olives and abandoned cattle rearing, had 75% of its sales receipts from cereals and 25% from beans or hay. The return to labour on a purely arable farm was roughly 1 million lire (£450) per hectare and falling. The production co-op was leasing whole farms at 300,000 lire per hectare. Very little land is for sale except for a few of the 4 hectare parcels created by the land-reform agency, and preference legally goes to neighbours when fields do become available. Farmers in 1987 were prepared to pay over 5 million lire per hectare for arable land.

B) MACHINERY

Estate managers reckon to write off a tractor after about 10,000 hours work, and within 10 years. On the land-reform farms, tractors are employed on arable land for 20-25 hours per hectare per year. Since most farms have only 20 hectares of arable, tractors are used for 50 working days a year and farmers are either carrying very much higher depreciation costs than the estates, or are only changing tractors after 25 years, when they are technically obsolescent. On the smaller farms which are commoner at Porrona they work even less, and this may explain the greater reliance on the service co-op there. The collective ownership of combine harvesters means that they are more efficiently used.

Family farmers have no clear idea of what the use of a tractor costs them over the year. The service co-ops were hiring them out with driver for c. 20,000 lire per hour. The Montalcino estates in 1987 budgeted tractors at 10-12,000 lire per hour as the cost of fuel, maintenance, and depreciation, excluding the wages of the driver. I have used a figure of 10,000 lire per hour for tractors in the calculations below, but it may be an under-estimate given the conditions prevailing.

C) GRAPE PRODUCTION.

One farmer who did sell grapes to Villa Banfi in 1987 received 40,000 lire a quintale, from vineyards yielding 100 quintali a hectare. Total receipts were 4,000,000 lire/ha, from which we have to deduct 500,000 lire in costs of chemicals and 460,000 for 46 hours of tractor time. Family labour input averages 400 hours per year per hectare (more with specialist production for quality wine), which meant they were working for less than 8,000 lire per hour that year, which was the current wage rate for grape picking. This ignores the major expense of planting a vineyard, and years when the weather makes the grapes unsaleable. For full figures on production costs for grapes and wine, see Appendix 2.

D) CATTLE REARING.

In 1987, 20 head of cattle earned one farmer 12 million lire after deducting expenses (both in the stall and in forage production). This is a very approximate figure for reasons which appear in chapter 4. This required 180 days labour in the stalla (4 hours per day for 365 days), and perhaps another 10 for hay making. A seasonal labourer (a tempo determinato) at Villa Banfi earned 13 million lire for 180 days labour in 1987; in addition he or she became eligible for some unemployment benefit taking the total up to nearly 16 million.

E) FORAGE

If cattle are kept, half to two-thirds of the land will be devoted to forage crops. If hay or green barley is sold to the stalla sociale the return to labour is 500-700,000 lire per hectare. If beans (favino) are planted in rotation with wheat, and sold to the service co-op, the return per hectare in 1987, when the price was 50,000 lire ql, was the same as wheat, though in the late 1980s it started to drop.

F) GRAIN PRODUCTION

This is the most important sector of production, on which the future of these farms rests. Costs of production vary according to whether the land is steep or flat, where or not it needs destoning after ploughing, and the size of the tractor employed.

1. Average costs in 1987 if all operations carried with machinery and labour provided by a service co-op (figures provided by co-op "Monte Amiata", S. Isabella, Castiglione D'Orcia). Prices in lire per hectare

Ploughing, disking twice, sowing, application of herbicides and fertilizers, shredding straw, transport		510,000
Harvesting		140,000
Materials	Fertilizer	160,000
	Herbicide	30,000
	Seed Corn	183,000
Taxes		80,000
Total		1,103,000

2. Costs in 1987 if operations done by family farmer using own machinery.

Tractor operations 25 hours /10,000 lire per hour	250,000
Harvesting with jointly owned combine-harvester	100,000
Materials as above	373,000
Total	723,000

Material costs can be reduced by using more manure and less chemical fertilizer, and using some of the last harvest for seed grain, though this now infringes royalty regulations.

Yields vary between 25 and 50 qli per hectare for hard wheat, which since the late 1970s is the dominant crop. 50 qli is only obtained on the best land, in the first year of a rotation, with favourable weather. Villa Banfi averages under 35 qli/ha, and the long term average at Montenero is 37, though in 1988 and 1989 it was below 30.

Prices peaked at 50,000 lire/ql in 1985, fell to 41,000 in 1986, 37,000 in 1987, rose to 42,000-43,000 in 1988 and 1989, and fell back to 37,000 in 1991.

Farmers in 1985 were harvesting grain worth 2 million lire per hectare, of which 1.2 million (£500) was the return on their labour. By 1988-9 the return was down below 500,000 lire (£230) per hectare if they used their own machinery. This assumes that there are no bank charges on the land and no taxes paid. For those using the service co-ops for the entire annual cycle, and for estates paying wage labour, 35 qli/ha and a price of 35,000 lire /ql is the break even point. Many were going below this in the last years of the decade. The full set-aside subsidy in 1991 was £300 per hectare, £200 when part of a rotation.

APPENDIX 2
Production Costs for Brunello Wine

This account of production costs in 1986 for an estate employing wage-labour and for a farm using family-labour is broken down into 4 stages:

• A) Costs of planting vineyard/hectare,
• B) Costs of producing quintal grapes.
• C) Costs of making and ageing wine.
• D) Costs of bottling and marketing wine.

A) COSTS OF PLANTING HECTARE OF VINEYARD

Year 1: Preparation, levelling and de-stoning ground, trench (scasso) of one metre, small amount of drainage installed and some ditches.

Year 2: Installing vine supports of reinforced concrete plus wire, planting of grafted vines, cultivation costs.

Year 3: Replacement of vines which have not taken and cultivation costs.

Year 4: Normal cultivation

Total money cost of 1 hectare vineyard over 4 years

	ESTATE	FARM
Labour (966 hours)	9,660,000	0
Materials	9,162,000	9,162,000
Machinery	11,273,000	7,170,000
Total	30,095,000	16,328,000

To the monetary costs have to be added interest. Calculated at 12%, on 6 months of that year's expenses, and compound thereafter.

1. For the estate:

	Expenditure	Interest:		Total
		on 6 months	on 12 months
Year 1	8,364,000	502,000		8,866,000
Year 2	13,796,000	828,000	1,064,000	24,554,000
Year 3	2,888,000	173,000	2,946,000	30,561,000
Year 4	5,055,000	303,000	3,667,000	39,586,000

2. For the Farm:

	Expenditure	Interest:		Total
		on 6 months	on 12 months
Year 1	6,231,000	374,000		6,605,000
Year 2	8,155,000	489,000	979,000	16,228,000
Year 3	936,000	56,000	1,947,000	19,167,000
Year 4	1,006,000	60,000	2,300,000	22,533,000

The interest charges represent a multiplier of 1.316

Planting costs: 40 milioni (estate), 22.5 milioni (farm)

	ESTATE	FARM
Depreciation (over 20 years)	4,720,000	2,659,000
Land taxes	30,000	30,000
Total (annual fixed costs)	4,750,000	2,689,000

Note : For plan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Illustrations
• ONE Introduction
• TWO Hard Work and No Money: Share-Cropping in Tuscany
• THREE Like Birds Freed from a Cage: Economic Changes in the Family-Farming Sector
• FOUR Experiences of Farming Since the Land-Reform
• FIVE An Economy of Scale: Wine Production on the Montalcino Estates
• SIX Marks of Distinction
• SEVEN Conclusion
• Appendix 1 Statistical Material for Family-Farming Sector
• Appendix 2 Production Costs for Brunello Wine
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Subject Index