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Probably the first inhabitants of Rome were breeders, farming came later. The Roman state was an agricultural society at the beginning of the 3rd century BCE. Most of the empire’s subjects worked in the fields. They were small, several-hectare farms. After the Second Punic War, the situation of farmers changed, not to say deteriorated.
They suffered poverty, many peasants spent many years in the army, and the land was wasted, while others sold their land to great owners and supplied plebs in the town. When Rome expanded to include provinces that supplied grain, their production ceased to be profitable in Italy. Some farmers switched to breeding (cows, sheep, goats, pigs and horses). In the first century BCE, small-scale peasants were still getting rid of their land, and in Italy, huge latifundia began to multiply, on which colonies or slaves worked. The first latifundia were established in Italy in the 3rd century BCE, as a result of combining leases of public land, buying or seizing land for small farmers for debt, and purchasing land of proscribed people for a song. In 133-123 BCE Tiberius Gracchus and Gaius Gracchus (plebeian tribunes) tried to introduce an agrarian reform that was to parcel out latifundia. However, the reform was unsuccessful. The rapid influx of slaves from the Roman conquests finally eliminated free citizens from farm work. Pliny the Elder used the phrase: “great estates have lost Italy” (Latifundia perdidere Italiam). Thus, the Roman historian and writer emphasized the situation of the Roman peasant who could not withstand competition with the great latifundia.
Cultivation and working conditions varied. It was puzzling to constantly idealize rural life. Many Romans found the life of farmers easy and pleasant, not realizing the real hardships of rural life (bad weather, primitive tools). There were also poems praising the work of the shepherds.
Senators invested in lands in Italy, but also, encouraged by the peace ruling in Empire, used the fertile soil abroad. The Romans cultivated more land by moving Mediterranean vegetation and proven farming methods north to Gaul, the Rhine Valley, and the Balkan Peninsula.
Grain, wool, olives, and wine were the main trading commodities throughout the Empire. There were Roman vineyards in Gaul, and olive groves were grown in North Africa. The Romans also learned new cultivation techniques in humid climates, which allowed them to use land in northern Gaul and Britain. Landowners lived in cities – the richest of them lived in Rome itself. The largest landed estates were powerful enterprises. In one such estate near the city of Pompeii (known as Boscatrecase) she stored 100,000 jars of wine. Large estates in other provinces had much lower labour costs, which was to the detriment of agriculture in Italy. As a result, Rome imported wheat from Egypt and Africa, wine from Gaul, oil from Spain and Africa, figs, dates and plums from Syria, cereals from the south, and vegetables from the northern provinces.
An interesting fact is that in the vicinity of Smyrna (now Izmir, Turkey), the Romans grew rice.
During the early empire, there was a change in the agriculture of Italy, largely due to the problem of the labour force. The ethnic composition of slaves and their preparation for work on a farm changed. Instead of highly skilled slaves from Hellenistic countries, whose enormous influx was characterized by the decline of the republic, at the beginning of the empire, mostly “northern barbarians” came to Rome: Gauls, Germans, and Britain. They did not know how to work in vineyards and olive plantations; they knew only pastoralism and, at best, the cultivation of cereals, so they could only be employed in the vineyards as unskilled workers. At this time, in many estates manual work on the land (hoeing) is abandoned, and a harrow is introduced, which results in savings in terms of manpower.
However, the most important factor in losing Italy’s economic advantage was the competition of the western provinces. Countries such as: Gaul, Spain or Dalmatia had very good natural conditions for fruit growing. Gradually, the people of these provinces learned the higher agrarian technique and began to massively plant vineyards and olive orchards. Gaul grew into the main wine producer in the western part of the Empire, and olive oil from Spain began to crowd Italian oil from the markets.
