Block sale at a single price of an agricultural fund consisting of a single body

The question has repeatedly been raised in doctrine and case law as to whether, in the case of a block sale at a single price of an agricultural fund consisting of a single body and made up of portions with different cultivation purposes, the neighboring direct cultivator, who has not exercised the right of first refusal, can demand redemption for an individual portion of the fund, having a specific cultivation purpose, claiming the invalidity of the notification of the proposed alienation on the basis of the lack of the distinction of prices for individual portions of the fund intended for different crops.

The numerous problems arising from the above case are of three kinds:

1) Whether it operates the block sale in the agricultural preemption
The answer is in the negative, in fact, while the doctrine has held that the problem of block sale arises for urban preemption, the same is not true for agrarian preemption, for which there is a rule (Art. 7, Paragraph 3 of Law No. 817 of 1971) for which “in the case of the sale of several funds each tenant, sharecropper or settler may exercise individually or jointly the right of preemption respectively of the cultivated fund or the entire complex of funds.”
In this regard, the case law of the Supreme Court has had occasion to clarify that “the agrarian preemption and redemption by the direct cultivator, owner of the land bordering on the one put up for sale are configurable even when the latter constitutes part of a larger real estate block being sold, provided that its detachment from the land complex does not undermine an inseparable farm unit or a single agricultural holding, but the plot constitutes an autonomous farm unit distinct from the rest of the land” (Supreme Court: Judgment no. 4797 of July 26, 1986).
Moreover, the Supreme Court did not specify that “the institution of agrarian preemption […omissis…] serves the purpose of rational exploitation of agricultural property, […omissis.] and therefore, since the right of pre-emption can be exercised even when the fund on which it is affixed is part of a larger extension, provided that in this case it presents a cultivation and production autonomy, the ascertainment of the existence of the conditions that allow the exercise of the right of pre-emption should be made not having regard to the configuration given by the parties to the contract of sale, but taking into account the objective situation, so as to verify on the one hand whether the land transferred is split into plots with different characteristics and different crops, and on the other hand whether the land should not nevertheless be considered an objectively unitary fund, for being the activities carried out by the former entrepreneur on the different plots coordinated with each other, so as to constitute
complementary aspects of single management” (Supreme Court: Judgment No. 2757, April 3, 1990).
In view of the above, it can be argued that in the matter of agrarian preemption, preemption can be exercised even limited to a limited strip of land cultivated differently from the rest, provided that the functional unity of the cultivated land is not thereby broken.
To this end, it seems appropriate to mention that this requirement is met when the cultivated land has its own unity of farm and separate cultivation does not break that unity or, again, when the land itself constitutes an autonomous farm unit.

(2) Whether the direct cultivator of the neighboring land can exercise the right of retraction when he has been put in a position to exercise the right of first refusal and has not done so
With regard to this issue, it should be noted that the cultivator can only exercise the action of retraction if he or she has not been placed in a position to exercise the right of first refusal. If he, on the other hand, could only exercise the right of first refusal limited to the portion of the specialized cultivation land and did not do so, he cannot at a later stage assert a right that operates only if the right of first refusal has not been exercised.
So, on the basis of the above, the retraction cannot be used for an afterthought by the grower, who was convinced that he could exercise the right of first refusal and did not exercise it.

3) Whether the manner in which the land was included in the preliminary contract of sale is relevant to the exercise of agricultural preemption
As for the above issue, according to case law, it is not relevant how the land was specifically designated, but rather reference should be made to the objective and physical configuration of the land. So in our case, the possibilities are related to whether or not the differentiated cultivation of the land results in farm splitting. In one case, the former, preemption can be exercised; in the other, the latter, the right of preemption cannot be exercised. In either case, however, the right of retraction will have to be deemed to have ceased.

Attorney Chiara Roncarolo

Attorney Maurizio Randazzo