The Economy of the Agricultural World

This chapter examines the social and technical conditions that both structured the Greek agricultural economy's permanent features and presided over the changes it experienced. It first considers the structures of real property, with a particular focus on the distribution of property, the size of the estates, and access to land and farming systems. It then discusses the crucial questions of risk management in an unpredictable environment, taking into account the different strategies employed by peasants to limit uncertainty caused by, for example, the extreme variability of the climate. It also analyzes tradition and innovation in agriculture and animal husbandry, the development of new lands that increased the area suitable for cultivation, and how general institutional conditions and social power relationships limited the transformations of agriculture, and hence an increase in yields in agricultural production. The chapter concludes with an analysis of changes in ancient agriculture and the market.