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Agriculture

One of Italy’s main geographical features is the prevalence of hilly and mountainous terrain. Out of a total land area of approximately 30 million hectares, only 23% is made up of lowland and this figure falls to 18% in the South and 9% in the central regions.
The urbanization process has progressively absorbed land in the last few years.

Agriculture contributes 2.5% of the value added produced by the Italian economy (about 57 billions lire), involving little less than 2 million workers.

The main differences in agriculture are typical of the division between the northern and southern countries of the European Union.

The northern part of Italy (namely Emilia-Romagna, Lombardia, Liguria, Piemonte, Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige and Valle d’Aosta) has highly specialized productive trends, producing: cereals, milk, cheese, fruit, vegetables, sugar beets, flowers, grape-wine, industrial crop and meat by products.

Central Italy (namely Marche, Abruzzi, Lazio and Tuscany) is mostly characterized by heterogeneous systems, producing: cereals, grape and wine, olives and oil, animal husbandry by products (cattle, sheep and pigs), fruit, vegetables, flowers and industrial crops (sunflower, tomato, soya).

Southern Italy, which includes Campania, Molise, Apulia, Basilicata, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia, has extensive farms that produce cereals, cattle, sheep, etc., as well as more active farms that specialize in oliveculture, viticulture, orchard, citrus fruit, flower and fruit culture.

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