The cultivation of green forage is extensive and is divided into the categories of temporary and perennial. The temporary includes vetches, pulse, lupine, clover and trifolium; and the perennial, meadow-trefoil, lupinella, sulla (Hedysarum coronarium), lucerne and darnel. The natural grass meadows are extensive, and hay is grown all over the country, but especially in the Po valley. Pasture occupies about 30% of the total area of the country, of which Alpine pastures occupy 1.25%. Seed-bearing vegetables are comparatively scarce. The principal are: white beans, largely consumed by the working classes; lentils, much less cultivated than beans; and green peas, largely consumed in Italy, and exported as a spring vegetable. Chick-pease are extensively cultivated in the southern provinces. Horse beans are grown, especially in the south and in the larger islands; lupines are also grown for fodder.
Among tuberous vegetables the potato comes first. The area occupied is about 0.7% of the whole of the country. Turnips are grown principally in the central provinces as an alternative crop to wheat. They yield as much as 12 tons per acre. Beetroot (Beta vulgaris) is used as fodder, and yields about 10 tons per acre. Sugar beet is extensively grown to supply the sugar factories. In 1898-1899 there were only four sugar factories, with an output of 5972 tons; in 1905 there were thirty-three, with an output of 93,916 tons.
Market gardening is carried on both near towns and villages, where products find ready sale, and along the great railways, on account of transport facilities. Rome is an exception to the former rule and imports garden produce largely from the neighbourhood of Naples and from Sardinia.
Among the chief industrial plants is tobacco, which grows wherever suitable soil exists. Since tobacco is a government monopoly, its cultivation is subject to official concessions and prescriptions. Experiments hitherto made show that the cultivation of Oriental tobacco may profitably be extended in Italy. The yield for 1901 was 5528 tons, but a large increase took place subsequently, eleven million new plants having been added in southern Italy in 1905.
The chief textile plants are hemp, flax and cotton. Hemp is largely cultivated in the provinces of Turin, Ferrara, Bologna, Forlì, Ascoli Piceno and Caserta. Bologna hemp is specially valued. Flax covers about 160,000 acres, with a product, in fibre, amounting to about 20,000 tons. Cotton (Gossypium herbaceum), which at the beginning of the 19th century, at the time of the Continental blockade, and again during the American War of Secession, was largely cultivated, is now grown only in parts of Sicily and in a few southern provinces. Sumach, liquorice and madder are also grown in the south.
The vine is cultivated throughout the length and breadth of Italy, but while in some of the districts of the south and centre it occupies from 10 to 20% of the cultivated area, in some of the northern provinces, such as Sondrio, Belluno, Grosseto, &c., the average is only about 1 or 2%. The methods of cultivation are varied; but the planting of the vines by themselves in long rows of insignificant bushes is the exception. In Lombardy, Emilia, Romagna, Tuscany, the Marches, Umbria and the southern provinces, they are trained to trees which are either left in their natural state or subjected to pruning and pollarding. In Campania the vines are allowed to climb freely to the tops of the poplars. In the rest of Italy the elm and the maple are the trees mainly employed as supports. Artificial props of several kinds—wires, cane work, trellis work, &c.—are also in use in many districts (in the neighbourhood of Rome canes are almost exclusively employed), and in some the plant is permitted to trail along the ground. The vintage takes place, according to locality and climate, from the beginning of September to the beginning of November. The vine has been attacked by the Oidium Tuckeri, the Phylloxera vastatrix and the Peronospora viticola, which in rapid succession wrought great havoc in Italian vineyards. American vines, are, however, immune and have been largely adopted. The production of wine in the vintage of 1907, which was extraordinarily abundant all over the country, was estimated at 1232 million gallons (56 million hectolitres), the average for 1901-1903 being some 352 million gallons less; of this the probable home consumption was estimated at rather over half, while a considerable amount remained over from 1906. The exportation in 1902 only reached about 45 million gallons (and even that is double the average), while an equally abundant vintage in France and Spain rendered the exportation of the balance of 1907 impossible, and fiscal regulations rendered the distillation of the superfluous amount difficult. The quality, too, owing to bad weather at the time of vintage, was not good; Italian wine, indeed, never is sufficiently good to compete with the best wines of other countries, especially France (though there is more opening for Italian wines of the Bordeaux and Burgundy type); nor will many kinds of it stand keeping, partly owing to their natural qualities and partly to the insufficient care devoted to their preparation. There has been some improvement, however, while some of the heavier white wines, noticeably the Marsala of Sicily, have excellent keeping qualities. The area cultivated as vineyards has increased enormously, from about 4,940,000 acres to 9,880,000 acres, or about 14% of the total area of the country. Over-production seems thus to be a considerable danger, and improvement of quality is rather to be sought after. This has been encouraged by government prizes since 1904.
Next to cereals and the vine the most important object of cultivation is the olive. In Sicily and the provinces of Reggio, Catanzaro, Cosenza and Lecce this tree flourishes without shelter; as far north as Rome, Aquila and Teramo it requires only the slightest protection; in the rest of the peninsula it runs the risk of damage by frost every ten years or so. The proportion of ground under olives is from 20 to 36% at Porto Maurizio, and in Reggio, Lecce, Bari, Chieti and Leghorn it averages from 10 to 19%. Throughout Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia and the greater part of Emilia, the tree is of little importance. In the olive there is great variety of kinds, and the methods of cultivation differ greatly in different districts; in Bari, Chieti and Lecce, for instance, there are regular woods of nothing but olive-trees, while in middle Italy there are olive-orchards with the interspaces occupied by crops of various kinds. The Tuscan oils from Lucca, Calci and Buti are considered the best in the world; those of Bari, Umbria and western Liguria rank next. The wood of the olive is also used for the manufacture of small articles. The olive-growing area occupies about 3.5% of the total area of the country, and the crop in 1905 produced about 75,000,000 gallons of oil. The falling off of the crop, especially in 1899, was due to bad seasons and to insects, notably the Cycloconium oleoginum, and the Dacus oleae, or oil-fly, which have ravaged the olive-yards, and it is noticeable that lately good and bad seasons seem to alternate; between 1900 and 1905 the crops were alternately one half of, and equal to, that of the latter year. With the development of agricultural knowledge, notable improvements have been effected in the manufacture of oil. The steam mills give the best results. The export trade, however, is decreasing considerably, while the home consumption is increasing. In 1901, 1985 imperial tuns of oil were shipped from Gallipoli for abroad—two-thirds to the United Kingdom, one-third to Russia—and 666 to Italian ports; while in 1904 the figures were reversed, 1633 tuns going to Italian ports, and only 945 tuns to foreign ports. The other principal port of shipping is Gioia Tauro, 30 m. N.N.E. of Reggio Calabria. A certain amount of linseed-oil is made in Lombardy, Sicily, Apulia and Calabria; colza in Piedmont, Lombardy, Venetia and Emilia; and castor-oil in Venetia and Sicily. The product is principally used for industrial purposes, and partly in the preparation of food, but the amount is decreasing.
The cultivation of oranges, lemons and their congeners (collectively designated in Italian by the term agrumi) is of comparatively modern date, the introduction of the Citrus Bigaradia being probably due to the Arabs. Sicily is the chief centre of cultivation—the area occupied by lemon and orange orchards in the province of Palermo alone having increased from 11,525 acres in 1854 to 54,340 in 1874. Reggio Calabria, Catanzaro, Cosenza, Lecce, Salerno, Naples and Caserta are the continental provinces which come next after Sicily. In Sardinia the cultivation is extensive, but receives little attention. Both crude and concentrated lime-juice is exported, and essential oils are extracted from the rind of the agrumi, more particularly from that of the lemon and the bergamot. In northern and central Italy, except in the province of Brescia, the agrumi are almost non-existent. The trees are planted on irrigated soil and the fruit gathered between November and August. Considerable trade is done in agro di limone or lemon extract, which forms the basis of citric acid. Extraction is extensively carried on in the provinces of Messina and Palermo.
Among other fruit trees, apple-trees have special importance. Almonds are widely cultivated in Sicily, Sardinia and the southern provinces; walnut trees throughout the peninsula, their wood being more important than their fruit; hazel nuts, figs, prickly pears (used in the south and the islands for hedges, their fruit being a minor consideration), peaches, pears, locust beans and pistachio nuts are among the other fruits. The mulberry-tree (Morus alba), whose leaves serve as food for silkworms, is cultivated in every region, considerable progress having been made in its cultivation and in the rearing of silkworms since 1850. Silkworm-rearing establishments of importance now exist in the Marches, Umbria, in the Abruzzi, Tuscany, Piedmont and Venetia. The chief silk-producing provinces are Lombardy, Venetia and Piedmont. During the period 1900-1904 the average annual production of silk cocoons was 53,500 tons, and of silk 5200 tons.
The great variety in physical and social conditions throughout the peninsula gives corresponding variety to the methods of agriculture. In the rotation of crops there is an amazing diversity—shifts of two years, three years, four years, six years, and in many cases whatever order strikes the fancy of the farmer. The fields of Tuscany for the most part bear wheat one year and maize the next, in perpetual interchanges, relieved to some extent by green crops. A similar method prevails in the Abruzzi, and in the provinces of Salerno, Benevento and Avellino. In Lombardy a six-year shift is common: either wheat, clover, maize, rice, rice, rice (the last year manured with lupines) or maize, wheat followed by clover, clover, clover ploughed in, and rice, rice and rice manured with lupines. The Emilian region is one where regular rotations are best observed—a common shift being grain, maize, clover, beans and vetches, &c., grain, which has the disadvantage of the grain crops succeeding each other. In the province of Naples, Caserta, &c., the method of fallows is widely adopted, the ground often being left in this state for fifteen or twenty years; and in some parts of Sicily there is a regular interchange of fallow and crop year by year. The following scheme indicates a common Sicilian method of a type which has many varieties: fallow, grain, grain, pasture, pasture—other two divisions of the area following the same order, but beginning respectively with the two years of grain and the two of pasture.