This article examines the dissemination of agricultural education in primary schools in the Romagna, an important rural area in post-unification Italy. The topic is explored within a wider perspective, analysing the impact of institutional changes – at both the national and local levels – on the transmission of agricultural knowledge in primary education during the final quarter of the nineteenth century. Two particular elements of the process are examined: students, as the intended beneficiaries of the educational process; and teachers, who as well as having a key role in reducing the extent of illiteracy were sometimes also involved in disseminating agricultural knowledge. The transfer of that knowledge appears to have been a very challenging task, not least because of the scant interest that Italy's ruling class showed towards this issue. However, increasing importance seems to have been given to agricultural education in primary schools during the economic crisis of the 1880s, when the expansion of this provision was thought to be among the factors that might help to prepare the ground for the hoped-for ‘agricultural revolution’.

No abstract

In the field of business administration, the management practices adopted by Third sector organisations have made economic associations a topic of growing interest for several years now. The origins of this heterogeneous group of entities can actually be traced far back in time. The main associative form of post-unification Italy’s farming class was comizi agrari, which were private organizations with public functions. By redefining their nature as multistakeholder non-profit organizations, this research takes on the task of re-examining historiography’s negative evaluation of comizi’s effectiveness. Out of the analysis regarding the comizi operating in Romagna, it is evident the nature of some successful comizi is characterised by certain key factors such as the value of organisational, institutional, and technical leadership, the ability to develop strategic services for stakeholders that were not effectively provided by enterprises or the public sector, an attention to financial sustainability, a careful orientation towards building institutional networks.