Winners and losers in Italia agriculture of the 1930s: A contribution to the analysis of the interwar crisis

The article presents an estimate of the Italian agricultural production in 1929 and in 1936-1937 by province and crop groups. The assessment, conducted, in the late 1930s by a fairly well-known geographer and agricultural statistician, Luchino Franciosa, was originally unpublished and had to be partially reconstructed since the original typescript has come down to us without the appendix containing the detailed calculations. This two-year estimate, built on a homogeneous methodology, is here used to evaluate the trend of the Italian provinces in terms of the value of agricultural production during the recession of the 1930s, highlighting winners and losers among the many «rural Italies» and their different crops. Moreover, Franciosa’s data are also a useful basis for a first insight into the determinants of the Great Crisis, from individual product specialisations to more general causes, such as international market trends and the economic policies of the fascist regime.