A latifundium (Latin: latus, "spacious" and fundus, "farm, estate") was originally the term used by ancient Romans for great landed estates specialising in agriculture destined for sale: grain, olive oil, or wine. They were characteristic of Magna Graecia and Sicily, Egypt, Northwest Africa and Hispania Baetica. The latifundia were the closest approximation to industrialised agriculture in Antiquity, and their economics depended upon slavery.
In the modern colonial period, the word was borrowed in Portuguese latifúndios and Spanish latifundios or simply fundos for similar extensive land grants, known as fazendas (in Portuguese) or haciendas (in Spanish), in their empires. The forced recruitment of local labourers allowed by colonial law made these land grants particularly lucrative for their owners.
Ancient Rome
The basis of the latifundia notably in Magna Graecia (the south of Italy including Sicilia) and Hispania was the ager publicus (state-owned land) that accumulated from the spoils of war, confiscated from conquered peoples beginning in the 3rd century BC. As much as a third of the arable land of a new province was taken for agri publici and then divided up with at least the fiction of a competitive auction for leased estates rather than outright ownership. Later the practice of establishing agricultural coloniae, especially from the early 1st century BC, as a way to reward Roman army veterans created smaller landholdings, which would then be acquired by large landowners in times of economic distress. Such consolidation into fewer hands, mainly patricians was not universally approved of, but efforts to reverse the trend by agrarian laws were generally unsuccessful. Later in the Empire, as leases were inherited, ownership of the former common lands became established by tradition, and the leases became taxable. Ownership of land, organised in the latifundia, defined the Roman Senatorial class as it was their only acceptable source of wealth., though they would set up their freedmen as merchant traders and participate as silent partners in businesses from which senators were disqualified.
Latifundia included a villa rustica, including an often luxurious owner's residence, and operation of the farm relied on a large number of slaves, sometimes kept in an ergastulum. They produced agricultural products for sale and profit such as livestock (sheep and cattle) or olive oil, grain, garum and wine. Nevertheless Rome had to import grain (in the Republican period, from Sicily and North Africa; in the Imperial era, from Egypt).
The latifundia quickly started economic consolidation as larger estates achieved greater economies of scale and productivity, and senator owners did not pay land taxes. Owners re-invested their profits by purchasing smaller neighbouring farms, since smaller farms had lower productivity and could not compete, in an ancient precursor of agribusiness.
Latifundia also expanded with conquest, to the Roman provinces of Mauretania (modern Maghreb) and in Hispania Baetica (modern Andalusia).
The latifundia distressed Pliny the Elder (died AD 79) as he travelled, seeing only slaves working the land, not the sturdy Roman farmers who had been the backbone of the Republic's army. His writings can be seen as a part of the 'conservative' reaction to the profit-oriented new attitudes of the upper classes of the Early Empire. He argued that the latifundia had ruined Italy and would ruin the Roman provinces as well. He reported that at one point just six owners possessed half of the province of Africa, which may be a piece of rhetorical exaggeration as the North African cities were filled with flourishing landowners who filled the town councils.
As small farms were bought up by the wealthy with their vast supply of slaves, the newly landless peasantry moved to the city of Rome, where they became dependent on state subsidies. Free peasants did not completely disappear; many became tenants on estates that were worked in two ways: partly directly controlled by the owner and worked by slaves and partly leased to tenants.
The production system of the latifundia went into crisis between the 1st and 2nd century as the supply of slaves dwindled due to lack of new conquests. Nevertheless by the 2nd century AD, latifundia had replaced many small and medium-sized farms in some areas of the Roman Empire.
Italy
In the 6th century, Cassiodorus was able to apply his own latifundia to support his short-lived Vivarium in the heel of Italy.