The last sharecropper in Carmignano

Mauro Innocenti and sharecropping in Tuscany

Prato and surroundings

January 1993 January 1992
Prato 38 45
Carmignano 25 31
Calenzano 13 15
Vaiano 6 8
Poggio a Caiano 5 6
Montemurlo 4 n/a
Vernio 1 n/a
Cantagallo 0 1

This service was first published in 1993 in the Prato edition of the Tirreno newspaper, and then large parts of it was republished in 2000 in the Pistoia magazine Master.
NINE years ago (in 1993, e.d.) an era came to an end. Sharecropping officially ceased to exist. A strange and innovative agricultural contract, typical in many areas of Tuscany that saw the farmer participate in the profits (and losses) of the harvest. It was 11 November 1993 when the last extension of law number 203 expired.   Originally decreed in 1982, the law put an end to this revolutionary way of managing fields. In the province of Prato at that time there were, on paper still 92 sharecroppers. In 1992, according to the Italian Farmers Confederation, in the province of Florence, there were 777 units. But very few could still be said to be authentic. To just read these estimates, albeit official, can mean distorting reality. The Law 203 of 1982 had in fact regulated the conversion of many agricultural contracts. This had to be completed within four years from the entry into force of the law. As for farms which proved insufficient or where the sharecropper devoted to farming less than two-thirds of the his/her total working time, a ten year extension from the following agrarian year was allowed. To the units which at the time of submission of the conversion did not have at least one worker less than sixty years of age, only 6 years were given. It was clearly a residual category. The good times were now gone and sharecropping was often practiced only part-time. Many had other jobs and devoted themselves to the fields (clearly not large and perhaps not close to home) only their spare time. They were weavers or traders for whom sharecropping was rather a hobby. The army of sharecroppers of the 50s, who lived in the countryside of Poggio a Caiano and Carmignano Valbisenzio, had been already decimated over thirty years earlier. The economic boom had made going to work in factories in Prato much more profitable and perhaps easier .Yet, after some decades, sharecropping is still discussed: in July 2000 there was an interesting meeting at the public library “Palazzeschi” in Seano. Some old landowners say it was even “a school of economics” in the sense that, directly linking one’s gain to the company profits, some sharecroppers would become conscientious administrators and subsequently small and shrewd entrepreneurs and artisans in the textile industry.

The Tuscan Hills, with their gentle slopes and valleys, harmonic and shaped by their various colours, certainly would not have been the same if sharecropping had not existed. Perhaps more than the climate, the work of the sharecroppers has in fact helped to shape in a unique and varied way the countryside that surrounds us. Sharecropping was born at the time of the Commons, well before 1200, replacing serfdom. It was, in a way, an almost revolutionary event. The name clearly indicates that, at the beginning, the farmer was entitled to half of the harvest. However, in more recent times, the share allotment assigned to the tenant progressively increased, reaching with the famous “De Gasperi agreement” 54% and then 64%.With the birth of the industries, the first repercussions were felt as the rich bourgeoisie diverted their capital to the factories. In Tuscany it was also thanks to the Leopoldina reform of 1785 that it survived, .It was glorified by the fascist propaganda as an example of solidarity between opposing classes. However little or nothing, if not only façade measures, was done to actually improve the living conditions of the farmers. After World War II the lure of the city, with numerous job opportunities generated by the strong expansion of industry and construction, attracted the younger generations and their desire for autonomy. Nevertheless, the permission of the landlord was needed to allow the sons and daughters of the sharecroppers to work elsewhere, such as in a factory. Claudio Cecchi, in a study on the evolution of agrarian contracts, noted that “the sharecropping family, with its rules of hierarchical respect, was the first to fall”. At that critical moment, and throughout the fifties, many disregarded this evolution. The left wing was a slave to its ideological prejudices on the rural world and property. Landowners, and their political allies, considered sharecropping as a way to keep stability and proved to be entrepreneurially conservative. The fight was only about a better distribution of the products. The peasants and their representatives were mistakenly not in favour of the formation of a small property.
A GREAT FARM near the Furba creek in Seano, with chickens and other farm animals everywhere. Behind, the old farmhouse with elegant round arches and stable there were a cow, two calves and a heifer. This was the picture, in 1993, of Mauro Innocenti’s house, a survivor of the sharecropping army that in Carmignano, where he had always lived, occupied in 1961 more than half of the municipal farming area and exceeded by far the number of farms owned directly or with employees. I interviewed him a few days before 11 November 1993 when the end of sharecropping was finally sanctioned. His father Alfredo and his grandfather Torello had been sharecroppers too. It was exactly in the Cegoli farm, where he was still working, that Mauro was born, although in a different house from the one in which he lived then with his wife Lucia. Speaking from near the huge fireplace that took up most of his kitchen, he was telling us how life had changed in the fields in fifty years. “At one time we grew beans, sorghum, clover, pears, wheat and grapes, living almost exclusively of what we produced,”. He was showing some colonic booklets over half a century old, now yellowed, in which the accounts of the crops were recorded. “Today, however, only three acres are taken up by vineyards and meadows.” His eyes watered as he retraced the sixty-three years of life, recalling the bygone days when none of the today’s house in Don Minzoni Street existed: years in which “we travelled mostly on foot or on the back of a donkey. “The grain and the grape harvest were almost a ritual, which, every year, is remembered in Seano with the threshing of the grain feast at the Park Museum “Quinto Martini.”

For the occasion “the sharecropper families helped each other. “Clocks did not exist”, he said flipping through the old notebook,   “We worked from dawn to dusk, a bit like today, we had lunch in the fields with a slice of bread and dried figs, and sometimes we had some salami. For the evening of the threshing we prepared panzanella. “The division into equal shares of the proceeds between the landowner and farmer created a relationship made of compromise and ambiguity: in the Fascist period there were also bonuses for production, but the subjugation of the tenant towards the landlord was still predominant. “My grandfather, Mauro told, went to Capezzana, where the earls owned the land, to bring a capon. He went to Capezzana (whose counts were the owners of the farm, e.d.). There was a discussion on the quality of the animal and the price of it. My grandfather then decided to sell it to the butcher and with the boiled meat that he had in exchange we had our Christmas dinner. “If at the end of the year there were creditors, the owner deposited in a bank account what was due to the sharecroppers. With this deposit, in fact, the lessor intended to protect himself from any debit the sharecropper might have in the following year. “A hailstorm or too dry season could damage the harvest,” the experienced sharecropper told us .But the major uncertainties and losses usually came from livestock. “A cow today treats you well but tomorrow may not make any more milk, calves, or could even die. If necessary, Mauro explained, the owner could however, authorize us to collect part of the money deposited in the bank account. This happened when my grandfather and I, at that time I was eight, got pneumonia. We needed treatment. “(Wf)

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