Rural property reorganization: brief overviews

The goal of fostering rural development and a more rational management of the national agricultural compendium, must–necessarily–be assessed on the one hand by setting a maximum and a minimum measure, so as to ensure the reconstitution of rational production units, and on the other hand by taking care of the productivity of the funds. On closer inspection, the main objective in the field of reorganization is more ascribable to the economic aspect of the organization of the productive fabric itself; which cannot be separated from specific supporting legislation.

Therefore, ever since the enactment of our Civil Code in 1942, the Legislature pursued the goal of reorganizing rural property throughout the country through the articles. 846 et seq. c.c., stipulating that “In transfers of property, divisions and assignments for any reason whatsoever, having as their object land intended for cultivation or susceptible to cultivation, and in the establishment or transfer of rights in rem over the same land, no fractionation shall take place that does not respect the minimum cultivation unit” (art. 846, para. 1, c.c.) and providing further that “Acts done against the prohibition of Article 846 may be annulled by the judicial authority upon application of the prosecutor. The action is prescribed in three years from the date of transcription of the deed” (art. 848 Civil Code).

The Legislature, however, far from defining what should be the extent of the “minimum cultivation unit … necessary and sufficient for the work of an agricultural family and…… to exercise a convenient cultivation according to the rules of good agricultural technique” (Art. 846, co. 2, Civil Code), merely provided – in the subsequent Article 847 Civil Code. – that the extent was to be “determined distinctly by area, having regard to the production system and the local demographic situation, by a measure of the administrative authority, to be adopted after consultation with the professional associations.”

This provision, however, remained a dead letter because the administrative authority on the one hand never took action to set said minimum unit, and on the other hand the professional associations, referred to in the provision, were abolished a few years later by Lgs.D. Of November 23, 1944 no. 369.

What was not extinguished, however, was the Legislature’s desire to encourage land rationalization as well as modernization and simplification of the agricultural sector, so much so that in 2001 Legislative Decree. 228/2010 (so-called Orientation Law), which extended the scope of productive possibilities recognized in the head of the agricultural enterprise (production, direct sale, environmental protection, agrotourism, etc.) and made amendments to the Agricultural Law further favoring rational land management through the extension and better regulation of the right of first refusal both when selling and re-renting a fund.

Also on the subject of improvement and concomitant preservation of land integrity, a measure similar to the original “minimum cultivation unit” was introduced by Legislative Decree. 99/2004, Article 7 of which sanctioned the introduction of the so-called single compendium, qualifying it as “The extent of land required to achieve the minimum level of profitability determined by the regional rural development plans for the provision of investment support under Regulations (EC) No. 1257 and 1260/1999, as amended“.

Unlike the regulation included in the Civil Code of 1942, which was repealed by the aforementioned Legislative Decree. 99/2004, with the introduction of the“single compendium” (Art. 7), the purpose of preventing excessive splitting of land in agriculture was pursued by emphasizing the productive aspect of the farm, i.e., by setting conditions for the attainment of tax benefits in order to ensure a minimum of profitability and no longer, therefore, by setting as a reference parameter the needs of the direct farming family or that of convenient cultivation according to the rules of good agricultural technique (see Cass. civ. Sec. II, July 08, 2014, No. 15562).

Beginning with the provisions included in the Civil Code of 1942 and the agrarian reform of 1950, therefore, the restructuring of the agricultural system was first focused on the dismantling of latifundia–often the object of bad cultivation and land degradation precisely because of over-extension–and the consequent regulation of the minimum and maximum extensions of the agricultural compendium.

Subsequently, with the gradual development of agricultural cultivation techniques, the regulation and facilitation of the reorganization of rural property, partly to overcome the concept of the “minimum cultivation unit,” came to focus more on productivity, as evidenced by the establishment of the so-called single compendium, based precisely on the productivity of the fund.

Attorney Chiara Roncarolo

Attorney Maurizio Randazzo