Archeological evidence shows that people have inhabited the lagoon since prehistoric times and its agricoltural history dates to a similarly distant past althrough information becomes more precise with Roman settlements, some 2,000 years ago. The Romans planted grapes and vegetables and continued the ancient practice of bringing flocks of sheep to graze there because its salty grass offers the sodium these animals need: still today, one occasionally sees a shepherd herding scores of them across the highway just outside venice to the shores of the lagoon.
The farming presently carried out in this area owes its origins to the ‘first’ Venetians, the inhabitants of the nearby mainland who fled such cities as Altino, Padua and Treviso when northern European tribes crossed over the alps and invaded them in the 5th century. These refugees found safety in the lagoon but they also found an environment very different from what they were used to.
The water is salty and the soil is sandy. Winter temperatures rarely go much below freezing but the bora, the fierce cold wind that blows from over the mountains to the north-east, can severly damage spring crops.
Whith time, however, the ‘islanders’ learned how to deal with these difficult conditions.
Their success, in wich the vast gardens of the lagoon’s once numerous monasteries and convents played an important part, resulted in a thriving agriculture and turned what initially were liabilities into benefits: the chilly winter temperatures are often moderated by gentling sea breezes, making it possible to produce very tender, often precocious vegetables known s PRIMIZIE, and the sandy soil and salty environment create a slightly bitter taste, higly prized, for example, in the tiny artichokes called CASTRAURE wich are a delicacy unique to the lagoon. There are three agricultural zones in the lagoon: Sant’Erasmo, Chioggia and Cavallino-Treporti. They all have a similar soil composition – sandy, with little humus, they are relatively close to each other and benefit from the warming effect that a large body of water has on temperature, but each one has a distinct micro-climate.
Cavallino-Treporti, just north and east of Venice, are closest to the sea and most exposed to the bora; severely hit by the terrible flood of 1966, today the agriculture is almost entirely a green-house one.
Chioggia, at the lagoon’s southern most tip, is also on the sea, but its farms are located on the interior, towards the west, and are thus less vulnerable to frigid north winds.
Sant’Erasmo is the most favored of the three, for it lies entirely within the lagoon; the waters’ thermal influence is greatest there and cavallino-Treporti help cushion it against the bora, which in the past was also blocked by the groves of Mediterranean sea-pine threes that once grew along the shore.
Much of venice’s production still comes from the farms in the lagoon, as it has for centuries, athough some changes have occurred: one of these involves transport. In the past, the farmers who got to the market at the Rialto first had the best chance of selling their crops and thus they would set off in the night, rowing or sailing across the lagoon by moonlight, sleeping in their boats, in order to arrive by dawn. They did this all year long, throught fog, wind and rain until the 1950’s, when motors began to replace oars and sails which sighificantly shortened the trip and reduced its dangers.
Other changes include the introduction, of heavy farm machinery, fertilizers, insecticides and irrigation, but perhaps the most profound ones have been the development of large-scale ‘industrial’ agriculture and trucking, Italy’s membership in the European Economic Community and relatively recent growth of supermarkets, to wich Italians have benn more resistant than other Europeans. As a result, there is now a much greater variety of foods to choose from and the time of year no longer necessarily determines what these is to eat.
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