Amalfi Citrus Farming

Today, on our first full day in Amalfi, we explored this small town and two of it's main sources of economic structure. The first of these places was a paper manufacturing mill. We discovered the old traditional ways of creating paper through old 13th century machinery that was super interesting! Chloe was even able to make her own piece of paper using one of these old processes.

Next, we went on to explore another rich tradition of Amalfi which is the citrus farming. We were led by our tour guide who also happens to be the owner of the hotel we're staying at. He and his family have lived in Amalfi for decades where his grandfather actually owned and worked on a citrus farm, while his grandmother also worked there by carrying 80 kilogram baskets of lemons on her head to transport them around town! We also learned from our tour guide that due to the limited area in the valley, they were forced to grow the citrus fruits on these hillsides we saw today, but in order to do so they had to carve out these step like banks in the walls of the hillside. They would dig out three meters wide for every one meter vertical, and this process was so strenuous and difficult that it would take some 10-15 years to carve out an average single farm for the area. This region truly is amazing with the views and agriculture for such a small area, and even more impressive watching some of the farmers at work today.

From our article about these citrus farms, we learned that citrus fruit growing is one of the largest categories in the Italian vegetable and fruit sector. Also since 2006, the value of production has amounted to more than 1 billion euros and has accounted for about 10% of the total value of vegetables and fruits produced. In Amalfi, oranges comprise roughly 54% of citrus production, 17% from lemons, and 19% from tangerines. Since the early 1990’s, land area covered by citrus fruits has decreased by 30% and the number of citrus farmers has decreased by about 45%. There were several reasons for this deterioration. One of them being the increasing competition of the citrus market has penalized Italian farmers, especially because their farms are relatively smaller. Also most farms are located in less favorable areas where economic and productive alternatives are limited. The article though was primarily revolved around a parametric estimation of technical and scale efficiencies of these Italian citrus farms. This essentially was a large dive into the statistics and data analysis behind these farms to see how efficient they run. The article found through various methods that the farmers in the Amalfi area had some relatively high inefficiency rates. We believe these inefficiency rates are due to this area and their farming being very traditional as it is passed through generations so the techniques have stayed very similar over the years with minimal innovation.

Nonetheless, the quality and smell, at least from my experience today, was unmatched and the views were just as good.