106 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
crisis caused by external competition. This led among other things to the
conversion of a signifi cant amount of good cereal land to other use and to a
reduction in average yield.
None of the evidence on yield thus far considered relates to the
independent peasantry or to small- unit farming in general. Cicero was
talking of sizeable estates. Referring to Verres’ third year as governor, he
revealed that the average farmer in the territory of Leontini put under seed
more than 930 iugera, over 230 hectares. The comments of Varro and
Columella, insofar as they are based on personal contacts and observation,
were surely based on the experience of their social peers. Thus the recent
attempt of Evans to arrive at a rough yield fi gure which is relevant to the
smallholder takes on added signifi cance.^28 Proceeding from the stipulation
of Caesar’s Campanian law of 59 BC that colonists drawn from families with
at least three children would each receive ten iugera (two and a half hectares)
of land in Campania, and from a basic subsistence fi gure of 230–275 kg
wheat equivalent per person per year,^29 Evans arrives at a minimum annual
yield fi gure in wheat for the land in question of approximately four- and-
one- half- to fi ve- fold (4.4–5.1:1). Since Campanian land was of particularly
high quality, this yield fi gure is taken as support for Columella, and for
‘perilously low’ average yields in wheat and other cereals in Italy, Sicily and
other parts of the empire.
The argument is fl awed. It turns out that the yield fi gure is meant to apply
if the whole of the allotment of 2½ hectares is under wheat and in every year.
But, fi rst, the calculation works only if small farmers practised monoculture
in grain. This is quite uncharacteristic of, if not actually incompatible with,
subsistence farming. In these circumstances, it is quite improper to ask what
level of productivity in wheat will provide for the subsistence needs of a
family expressed in wheat equivalent. Wheat equivalent is a term applied by
agricultural economists for subsistence needs, including essential non- food
items (housing, clothing, etc.) as well as food, in terms of the staple crop
rather than money; this is appropriate with respect to a society where
producers consumed the greater part of the crop and often or usually paid
taxes and rents in kind. The term is properly used in this way, rather than as
a term for production, where the implication is that the total subsistence
requirement of the household would be met from the wheat harvest. In
passing, we may note that wheat is a low- yield crop, and that naked wheats,
on which the calculations of the agricultural economists are based, are
unlikely to have been the dominant crop of the subsistence peasant in
Campania or elsewhere in Italy and the empire at large. Peasants engaged in
producing food essentially for their own consumption grew a wide variety
of cereals and other crops. The net result is that the yield fi gure thought by
Evans to have been necessary for the survival of an ex- soldier peasant family
in Campania is unrealistically high. Secondly, since Evans believes in more
or less universal biennial fallow, which means that half the land is rested
each year, his calculations imply a return on seed sown of roughly nine- to