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A latifundium (Latin: latus, "spacious", and fundus, "farm", "estate")The singular latifundium occurs but once (in Pliny's Natural History 13.92, with the meaning "estate", suggesting to Anton J.L. van Hooff an undefined, colloquial deprecating term, rather than a description of a particular type of farm. To the linguistic evidence presented by K.D. White, ( Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 14 1967:62–79), who found only seven instances of the rare word latifundia in Roman texts, Van Hooff added five more instances in "Some More Latifundia" Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 31,1 (1st Quarter 1982:126–128), and found that two were "in a neutral, almost technical way" (p. 128). was originally the term used by for great landed property specialising in agriculture destined for sale: grain, olive oil, or wine. They were characteristic of Magna Graecia and Sicily, Roman Egypt, Northwest Africa and Hispania Baetica. The latifundia were the closest approximation to industrialised agriculture in antiquity, and their economics depended upon slavery.
In the modern colonial period, the word was borrowed in Portuguese latifúndios and Spanish latifundios or simply fundos for similar extensive land grants, known as (in Portuguese) or (in Spanish language), in their empires.
Later, the practice of establishing agricultural coloniae, especially from the early 1st century BC, as a way to reward Roman army veterans created smaller landholdings, which would then be acquired by large landowners in times of economic distress. Such consolidation into fewer hands, mainly , was not universally approved of, but efforts to reverse the trend by were generally unsuccessful.
Later in the Roman Empire, as leases were inherited, ownership of the former common lands became established by tradition, and the leases became taxable. Ownership of land, organised in the latifundia, defined the Roman Senate class as it was their only socially acceptable source of wealth (as a result of the farmer-soldier tradition of Cinncinatus).
Latifundia included a villa rustica, including an often luxurious owner's residence, and the operation of the farm relied on a large number of slaves,Pierre Grimal, La Vie à Rome dans l'Antiquité, in Que sais-je ?, n° 596, 10ª ed., Presses universitaires de France, 1994. , . sometimes kept in an ergastulum. They produced agricultural products for sale and profit such as livestock (sheep and cattle) or olive oil, grain, garum and wine. Nevertheless, Rome had to import grain (in the Republican period, from Sicily and North Africa; in the Imperial era, from Egypt).A. Carandini, Il latifondo in epoca romana, fra Italia e province, in Du Latifundium au latifondo, Un héritage de Rome, une creation médiévale ou modèrne, Actes de la table ronde (Bordeaux 1992), Paris, 31–36.
The latifundia quickly started economic consolidation as larger estates achieved greater economies of scale and productivity, and senator owners did not pay land taxes. Owners re-invested their profits by purchasing smaller neighbouring farms, since smaller farms had lower productivity and could not compete, in an ancient precursor of agribusiness.
Latifundia also expanded to the Roman provinces of Mauretania (modern Maghreb) and in Hispania Baetica (modern Andalusia) with conquest of those areas.
The latifundia distressed Pliny the Elder (died AD 79) as he travelled, seeing only slaves working the land, not the sturdy Roman farmers who had been the backbone of the Republic's army.Martin 1971.Pliny's six occurrences of latifundia are in his Natural History, 13.92, 17.192, 18.17, 18.35, 18.261 and 18.296. His writings can be seen as a part of the conservative reaction to the profit-oriented new attitudes of the upper classes of the Early Empire. He argued that the latifundia had ruined Italy and would ruin the Roman provinces as well. He reported that at one point, just six owners possessed half of the province of Africa,Pliny Natural History 18.7.35. which may be a piece of rhetorical exaggeration as the North African cities were filled with flourishing landowners who filled the town councils.
As small farms were bought up by the wealthy with their vast supply of slaves, the newly landless peasantry moved to the city of Rome, where they became dependent on state subsidies. Free peasants did not completely disappear. Many became tenants on estates that were worked in two ways: partly directly controlled by the owner and worked by slaves, and partly leased to tenants.
The production system of the latifundia went into crisis between the 1st and 2nd century as the supply of slaves dwindled due to lack of new conquests. Laura Tedeschi. Ville romane tardoantiche della regione Marche, Master'
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In Sicily, latifundia dominated the island from medieval times. They were only abolished by sweeping land reform mandating smaller farms in 1950–1962, funded from the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, the Italian government's development fund for southern Italy (1950–1984).John Paul Russo, "The Sicilian Latifundia", Italian Americana, March 1999, Vol. 17 Issue 1, pp. 40–57.
In the Iberian peninsula, the possessions of the Church did not pass to private ownership until the ecclesiastical confiscations of Mendizábal (), the secularization of church-owned latifundia, which proceeded in pulses through the 19th century.
Big areas of Andalusia are still populated by an underclass of jornaleros, landless peasants who are hired by the latifundists as "day workers" for specific seasonal campaigns. The jornalero class has been fertile ground for socialism and anarchism. Still today, among the main Andalusian trade unions is the Rural Workers Union ( Sindicato Obrero del Campo), a far-left group famous for their squatting campaigns in the town of Marinaleda, Province of Seville.
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