Hard times after poor harvestsThe fuochi taxation listing from Ascoli for 1728, contains a note exempting the poorest citizens from paying the levy. It describes the destitution brought about by a series of bad harvests in the agricultural Masserie of the Capitanata. The excerpt refers to the poor gleaning in the cornfields. This was a significant part of Ascoli's rural economy up until the large scale mechanisation of agriculture in the late 1960s. Indeed, for much of the early modern period, it made greater economic sense for poor families to glean and forage than to cultivate grain directly.
We hereby declare that all these citizens fuochi taxed at less than 42 carlini are manual workers, farm labourers and poor artisans who live day to day by their own labour, because of the dreadful harvests of recent years and especially of this year, which have led to the closure of the greater part of the Massarie and with much less employment available this year than normal, it has been difficult to find work, people have even found it difficult to survive, and the above taxes will be hard to collect this year because the poor have been unable to glean; in the fields the ears of corn have been destroyed by locusts and by mice, whereas in normal years they provide ample foraging. Back
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