Tuscany’s land distribution has gone through a series of changes in the course of history. In ancient Roman times (from the first century C.E.), a system of villae was established in some areas of Tuscany (The Romans colonised large parts of Italy, creating a system of farms with both an urban and a rural part. Those Roman urban unities later became villages and shaped some of the Italian landscape. For in depth analysis of the process, see Dyson (2003) and Francovich (2003)). In the Middle Ages (12th century), land, owned by the church and the aristocracy, was organised into fortified towns. This latter land distribution was then slowly replaced by a system called mezzadria (For  a detailed history of mezzadria see Nanni (2012)), a socio-ecological system that shaped most of the Tuscan landscape from the Middle Ages to the 14th century. The mezzadria system is a share cropping system whereby the farmer pays a share (usually half, as the etymology of the word mezzadria suggests) of the products to the landowner as rent. Due to its nature, the mezzadria system allowed landowners to sit back and relax without having to make any significant investments. They provided land and houses (that they already owned by inheritance) to the mezzadri, the families who worked the land. In return, the mezzadri had to work the land all year long and provide half of every harvest (once a year for wheat, grapes and olives) to the owner. The conditions in which the mezzadri worked depended on the type of soil they were given and the fairness of the owner. As large areas of land were difficult for a single family to farm, the land was divided into small plots, which were then divided into smaller parts and rows assigned to olives, wheat and grape cultivation, thus transforming the hills into a huge patchwork.

Every family of the mezzadri had to provide their own food and cultivate the traditional crops of grains, grapes and olive trees, as well as raise as many animals as they could. Other plants such as chestnuts, walnuts and apple trees were cultivated in different areas of Tuscany. The most common animals raised were pigs, chickens, goats and cows. They used oxen (castrated bulls) to work the soil, and chicken and pigs for animal protein or to produce the typical salami and prosciutto salted meats. Goats and cows were usually used for their milk and occasionally for their meat. Woods were a fundamental resource for firewood, for acorns to feed the goats and pigs, as well as for foraging different berries, wild asparagus, mushrooms, truffles, etc.

The system was efficient due to the cycle of each harvest, being naturally timed so that the different harvests alternated with each other and did not inundate the mezzadro with harvests at the same time. Thus, olive tree and vine pruning was carried out in the spring, canopy management occurred in the summer, and the harvesting, threshing and ploughing the fields for wheat were undertaken in August. In the fall, the grape harvest was carried out during the months of September to October. In November, the olive harvest occurred and the year would conclude with pig slaughtering in December. The system created almost no waste—the remaining hay and straw from the wheat harvest was used to feed the cows. The discarded branches of olive trees and stems of the vines could be eaten by the goats, and the grape skins provided food for the chickens. This system could be reproduced at a farm with very little external input required.

A podere, a piece of land surrounding a house assigned to a mezzadro of a size manageable by a family, is almost entirely self-sufficient. The beauty and uniqueness of the Tuscan landscape may be mainly attributed to the system of the mezzadria. Due to the mezzadria system, large monoculture was avoided as every podere was organised in a way that integrated the various different types of crops within its land. The podere usually consisted of a farmhouse on by top of a hill surrounded its crops: the grapevines and olive trees would be arranged in rows and separated by an area allocated for wheat cultivation (Figure 1). Some areas would then be reserved for woods, a well, a threshing area, a cellar and a barn. Activities were held by extended families in front of the barn, as shown in this picture from the early 1900s (Figure 2). The mezzadri divided the Tuscan territory into various poderi, with borders shown by pointy cypress trees, shaping the landscape that, years after the end of the mezzadria, may still be enjoyed today (Figure 3).