Agricultural and land use change in central Basilicata. From Carlo Levi to the Comunitá Montana

Abstract

In the 1930s the anti-Fascist activist Carlo Levi was exiled by Mussolini to a remote hilltop village in the south Italian region of Basilicata. His account of the exile-Christ Stopped at edoli- contains detailed observations on agriculture and land use in central Basilicata, and this information forms the backcloth of this article's analysis of rural change in Aliano (the village of exile) and the surrounding district over the past 50 years. Agricultural census data, land use mapping and other forms of fieldwork are used to show that, although in some respects little has changed since Levi's day, the rural economy has been given a boost by irrigation, cooperatives and the establishment of intensive fruit farming in the valleys. Unfortunately the future of agriculture is threatened by the unwillingness of the younger generation to consider working the land. © 1990.