'Medieval' Farmers Busy at Villa I Tatti

Villa I Tatti, Harvard's center for Renaissance studies outside Florence, Italy, is best known for its exquisite art collection and library, formerly the property of the art historian Bernard Berenson.

But the villa's property also includes a piece of land that poses a striking contrast with the Berenson estate's opulence: three modest farms of wheat, olive trees, and wine grapes.

There, according to professors and administrators familiar with the villa, a cluster of Italian families farm the land in a labor system modeled after centuries-old agricultural customs.

I Tatti is styled in the "Renaissance System" of a central main house surrounded by smaller buildings and outlying farmlands, according to Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Dante Della Terza, a member of the villa's advisory committee. On approximately 50 acres of farmland, four families reside in small houses and tend to the crops.

Harvard has operated the farms, an old part of the estate, since Berenson left I Tatti to the University in 1950. The crop yield raises a small profit for the villa, helping subsidize the salaries of several office workers there.

"When Harvard originally inherited the estate, they had practically a medieval arrangement where the local farmers were peasants on the estate," says Fine Arts Professor James S. Ackerman, an advisory committee member. "Now they're employees of Harvard," Ackerman explains.

Professor of English and Comparative Literature Walter Kaiser, chairman of the advisory committee, says the families operate under the system of mezzadria, where laborers agree to farm the land and surrender a negotiated portion of their crops to the farm's owner. Kaiser calls the dictionary translation of mezzadria-- "sharecropping"--a distortion of the concept.

"That's their life. Many of them were born on the land and have lived all their life there. They love it" is how Director of Budgets Robert Rotner describes I Tatti's relationship with the workers.

I Tatti's farms are administered by a fattore, who negotiates the terms of the farmer's employment. Ackerman translates this word as "bailift" and likens the official to the overseer on a Southern plantation.

Under the system, farmers are free to leave the land and benefit from the local government's retirement and welfare system. Rotner, who has done extensive analyses of the villa's finances, says the workers by law receive wages on par with other Italian farmers, which in some cases exceed blue-collar wages in Italy.

"I don't think Harvard made [the laborers terms] better or worse" when it inherited I Tatti. Rotner says, calling mezzadria a harmomous relationship" between the villa and the four families.

"There's an allegiance on those people's part not to Harvard but to I Tatti," he adds.

Ackerman agrees that "the families have a really good deal," saying, "being on the Harvard welfare system is better than most things around there."

Farming the grounds under mezzadria "makes Harvard a responsible landowner in the Florence area," Rotner adds.

Much of the wine and olive oil produced on the villa is processed and served there as well, according to Kaiser.

Harvard plans to farm the land indefinitely, because "the land is very much an integral part of I Tatti," Rotner says. All decisions about the villa's operation are made by Director Craig H. Smyth, who oversees the scholarly work of about a dozen visiting fellows each year.