Primary Industry in The Mezzogiorno

• The Mezzogiorno consists of the Italian peninsula south of Rome, along with the islands of Sicily and Sardinia.
• The Mezzogiorno is a peripheral economic region due to the relatively poor living standards of people in comparison to the North of Italy.
• The Mezzogiorno suffers from a number of common characteristics of peripheral regions which affect primary activity in the region:

Physical Characteristics

• 45% of the land in the Mezzogiorno is hilly, while 40% in mountainous. This hinders agriculture as machinery is inefficient in many areas and can’t reach some farms.
• Soils in the region are generally quite poor and thin. Much of the land is only suitable for grazing goats and sheep.
• Drought in common in summer. The landscape consists largely of limestone, a permeable rock. This hinders agricultural growth as many areas are not irrigated.
• Soil erosion in the region is rampant as a result of deforestation in the past. Heavy rainfall causes gully erosion in the winter, while strong winds blow away loose, dry soils in the summer.
• The region does benefit as a result of long growing seasons in the summer, due to the long, warm Mediterranean summers.
• There are also fertile soils in the lowlands of Campania, around Mount Vesuvius near Naples, and the plain of Catania, around Mount Etna on the island of Sicily.

Economic/Human Factors

• Overproduction of crops such as olives and tomatoes has led to low prices for farmers in the Mezzogiorno.
• Home markets, such as Naples or Palermo, are quire poor and export markets were too distant as a result of poor transport. This is a direct result of the local landscape.
• In the past, much of the land was worked by share-croppers and landless labourers. They had no incentive to improve the system.
• Labour intensive methods, combined with poor irrigation and lack of fertilisers, have resulted in low productivity.
• In many areas, monoculture (or the growing of a single crop type) is present,