Test Your Knowledge of Ancient Roman Agriculture with Our Quiz!

Roman Agriculture: A Summary

• Rome expanded to rule much of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East, and its agriculture practices were influenced by the Mediterranean climate.

• The majority of people in Rome were engaged in agriculture, with the rural society becoming dominated by large estates owned by the wealthy and utilizing mostly slave labor.

• The Mediterranean triad of crops, grains, olives, and grapes, were most important, with grains providing 70-80% of the calories in an average diet.

• Land ownership was a dominant factor in distinguishing the aristocracy from the common person, and land was classified into three types of terrain: champaign, hills, and wooded, verdant mountain highlands.

• The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by owner and his family, tenant farming, forced labor by slaves owned by aristocrats, and other arrangements in which a farm was leased to a tenant.

• Trade between provinces of the empire was significant, and all regions of the empire were largely economically interdependent.

• Wheat, emmer, spelt, barley, and millet were produced in some provinces; others specialized in wine and others in olive oil, depending on the soil type.

• Cows provided milk while oxen and mules did the heavy work on the farm, and horses were raised by the rich for racing or war.

• The consumption of olive oil provided about 12% of the calories and about 80% of necessary fats in the diet of the average Roman.

• The cultivation of grapes on large estates using slave labor was common in Italy, and wine was becoming a universal drink in the Roman empire.

• The best soil for farming was fat and loose soil that was the least costly and most productive, followed by fat and dense soil, and moist soils.

• Storage was important, and granaries had to be well-ventilated, cool, and with minimal humidity, to prolong freshness.

• The Romans had handbooks on farming practice, and Cicero considered farming the best of all Roman occupations.Farming in Ancient Rome

• The profitability of vineyards was exaggerated to make the point that grain offers little profit compared to wine.

• Average wheat yields per year in the 3rd decade of the century were around 1,200 kg/ha in Italy and Sicily, 1,710 kg/ha in Egypt, 269 kg/ha in Cyrenaica, Tunisia at 400 kg/ha, and Algeria at 540 kg/ha, Greece at 620 kg/ha.

• An agricultural unit was known as a latus fundus, which can be interpreted as a latifundia or at 500 iugera or around 125 hectares.

• By the 70s AD, Africa fed Rome for eight months of the year and Egypt only four.

• It is estimated that Rome needed at least 150,000 tonnes of grain per year, calculating that each resident of the city consumed 200 kilograms (440 lb) of grain per year.

• Mechanical devices aided agriculture and the production of food, such as the Barbegal mills in southern France, which had a capacity of 4.5 tons of flour per day.

• Farmers in northern Gaul used a kind of automatic harvester or reaper called the "vallus" or "gallic vallus", which cut the ears of grain without the straw and was pushed by oxen or horses.

• Aristocrats and common people could acquire land for a farm in one of three ways: purchase, reward for going to war, or inheritance.

• Though some small farms were owned by lower-class citizens and soldiers, much of the land was controlled by the noble class of Rome.

• The farms would produce a variety of crops depending on the season, and focused on trying to acquire the best possible farm under the best possible conditions.

• The majority of farm work was done by slaves, who were relatively cheap to use because they were property.

• Roman farmers faced many of the problems which have historically affected farmers, including the unpredictability of weather, rainfall, and pests, and the risk of war and land conflicts.