Word: landing
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...land that he does work, Berlingieri-like most of Italy's other larger landowners-follows an ancient ruinous practice: he raises two wheat crops in succession, and turns the produce into a quick cash profit. Then he returns the land to his sheep. Berlingieri's tenants can do no better; generation after generation they have worked their fields only on three-year leases, had to face expulsion from the land at the end of each three-year term at the owner's will. They never dared to invest years of labor improving a soil whose yield might...
Said Francesco Mauri at nearby Cutro: "This land will be ours as soon as it is cleared, or we will lie dead upon it. They may kill us, but we won't leave the land...
...Rape of the Land. This deep feeling for the soil is shared by many Italian landowners who work their land themselves, or treat their tenants as fellow owners. But under Italy's widespread system of absentee ownership, too many masters of the land rent it out for a fixed fee to subcontractors; they in turn rent it out to tenants who must make them a profit...
Near Cutro, a peasant paused behind his plow and explained how the system works: "This land belongs to the heirs of the noble Filippo Albani. They live far from Calabria. Cavaliere Francesco Cosentino rents land from them. He is a wealthy gentleman who sits in an armchair in Crotone. When we take off our hats to him, he seldom answers. We don't deal with Cosentino direct; he rents his land out to Francesco Corradi...
...Corradi doesn't despise the company of poor peasants. In fact, he is always around. I planted a fig tree here one day. I have held this land for 15 years, and never a tree on it. I want a tree. But Corradi rushed up shouting, 'Who planted this fig tree?' He made me cut it down...