A significant change:
from grazing grounds to wheatfields

"Sheep rearing has lasted for many centuries in Capitanata, not simply due to the laws and the power of despots. The serious and complex reasons behind this choice have determined the activites of the inhabitants: the land in these areas is hard and stony and the variability of the climate has also been an important factor."

This is the introductory description of the agricultural situation in North Puglia in a small but precious volume which also includes numerous photos and is bound in an elegant brown cover with gold lettering, published by the Pavoncelli Farm Complex of Cerignola in 1907.
In 1806, during the French occupation, a law was passed which permetted everyone on the Tavoliere to redeem the land from the condition of using it only as grazing fields.

"And it is to the honour and glory of the Italian Parliament, that on the 16th February of 1865 the II Royal Property of the Customs of Foggia, responsible for the transfer of sheep was abolished for good."

These words, that obviously resound with the rethoric of the time, remind us of the exact period when agriculture finally came to the fore in these territories.

"Sheep farming was no longer an obligatory activity but simply a choice; and the owners who had acquired the right to cultivate their land as they thought best, redeemed the ground rent by paying the sum in installments. At that point the plough resumed power, and from thence forward would never lose it again; and Capitanata could finally imitate the rich and flourishing cultivations of its neighbouring town of Bari."

When this turn towards agriculture came into being, the extensive grazing grounds were divided and, new social classes came to occupy the scene, with more inhabitants moving to this area. The economy based on wheat production became predominant, and with its methods, conditioned the new techniques, the social status, the territory and the environment.

Manual harvesting

"The Tavoliere, a sea of green in the winter season, is a blonde wave in the fertile month of May with all the ears of corn dancing to the billowing winds, under a flaming hot sun in a dark blue sky that reminds one of Africa with its landscapes and fiery sunsets."

A gleaner

At the beginning of the last century, hundreds of farm labourers animated the fields on the Tavoliere and worked frenetically for hours under the sun. The transformation of the big land properties on the plain increased the demand of labourers, employed especially during the season of the wheat cultivation and harvesting.

After harvesting with the first steam engines

The first harvesting machines proceeded noisily, raising enormous clouds of dust and hay. The labourers led a very hard life and from daybreak tull sunset they harvested the wheat and gathered the sheaves.
When the harvesting was done and the wheat stubs were burnt, the poorest among the poor rambled among the ashy furrows, in search of any grains of wheat discarded by the machines, not gathered by men or eaten by the birds, and obtained a little flour from those burnt grains to feed themselves and their families.

Tillers with "supervisor"

Those women and men are responsible for the beauty of this region; they have taken care of the landscape and enriched it with their work, and rendered it more modern and humane with their hard struggles to obtain better salaries and more decent life conditions.
The low landscape on the horizon was once the haunt not only of the birds but of numerous labourers that worked the land.
Today only a few hands are necessary to work these fields with the powerful tractors available.
What has survived of this farm civilization is part and parcel of the towns of the Tavoliere, the architecture of their houses, the names of the various places; evident traces of this past are to be found in the dialects still spoken here, the stories related by old folk, the old fainted photos you can see reproduced, the food we eat.
It's the story of a civilization that no longer exists, or which perhaps has been simply transformed and survives in and around us: a heritage of which we are proud heirs.