Editing Family farm (section)

==History==
[[File:Millstätter Berg Obermillstatt Lammersdorf 2013a.jpg|thumb|[[Dispersed settlement]] landscape in [[Carinthia]].]]
[[File:San Martin de Tor - Seres.jpg|thumb|Mountain farms in [[South Tyrol]].]]
In the [[Roman Republic]], ''[[latifundia]]'', great [[landed estate]]s, specialised  in agriculture destined for export, producing grain, olive oil, or wine, corresponding largely to modern [[industrialized agriculture]] but depending on [[slave labour]] instead of mechanization, developed after the [[Second Punic War]] and increasingly replaced the former system of family-owned small or intermediate farms in the [[Roman Empire]] period. The basis of the latifundia in Spain and Sicily was the ''[[ager publicus]]'' that fell to the dispensation of the state through Rome's policy of war in the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD.

In the collapse of the [[Western Roman Empire]], the largely [[Roman villa|self-sufficient villa-system]] of the latifundia remained among the few political-cultural centres of a fragmented Europe. These latifundia had been of great importance economically, until the long-distance shipping of wine and oil, grain and ''[[garum]]'' disintegrated, but extensive lands controlled in a single pair of hands still constituted ''power'': it can be argued that the latifundia formed part of the economic basis of the European social [[feudal system]], taking the form of [[Manorialism]], the essential element of  feudal society,<ref>"Feudal Society", in its modern sense was coined in [[Marc Bloch]]'s 1939–40 books of the same name. Bloch (''Feudal Society'', tr. L.A. Masnyon, 1965, vol. II, p. 442) emphasised the distinction between economic manorialism which preceded feudalism and survived it, and political and social feudalism, or ''seigneurialism''.</ref> and the organizing principle of [[rural economics|rural economy]] in medieval Europe.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Peter |last=Sarris |title=The Origins of the Manorial Economy: New Insights from Late Antiquity |journal=The English Historical Review |volume=119 |issue=481 |year=2004 |pages=279–311 |doi=10.1093/ehr/119.481.279 }}</ref>
Manorialism was characterised by the vesting of legal and economic power in a [[Lord of the Manor]], supported economically from his own direct landholding in a [[Manorialism|manor]] (sometimes called a fief), and from the obligatory contributions of a legally subject part of the [[peasant]] population under the jurisdiction of himself and his [[manorial court]].  
Manorialism died slowly and piecemeal, along with its most vivid feature in the landscape, the [[open field system]]. 
It outlasted [[serfdom]] as it outlasted feudalism: "primarily an economic organization, it could maintain a warrior, but it could equally well maintain a [[capitalist]] landlord. It could be self-sufficient, yield produce for the market, or it could yield a money rent."<ref>{{cite journal |first=Andrew |last=Jones |title=The Rise and Fall of the Manorial System: A Critical Comment |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=32 |issue=4 |year=1972 |pages=938–944 [p. 938] |doi=10.1017/S0022050700071217 |jstor=2117261 |s2cid=154937254 |postscript=; }} a comment on {{cite journal |first1=D. |last1=North |authorlink=Douglass North |first2=R. |last2=Thomas |title=The rise and fall of the manorial system: a theoretical model |journal=The Journal of Economic History |volume=31 |year=1971 |issue=4 |pages=777–803 |doi=10.1017/S0022050700074623 |jstor=2117209 |s2cid=154616683 }}</ref> The last feudal dues in France were abolished at the [[French Revolution]]. In parts of eastern Germany, the ''Rittergut'' manors of [[Junker]]s remained until [[World War II]].<ref>{{cite journal |first=Hartwin |last=Spenkuch |title=Herrenhaus und Rittergut: Die Erste Kammer des Landtags und der preußische Adel von 1854 bis 1918 aus sozialgeschichtlicher Sicht |journal=Geschichte und Gesellschaft |volume=25 |issue=3 |year=1999 |pages=375–403 |jstor=40185809 }}</ref>
The [[common law]] of the [[leasehold estate]] relation evolved in [[medieval England]]. That law still retains many archaic terms and principles pertinent to a feudal social order. Under the tenant system, a farm may be worked by the same family over many generations, but what is inherited is not the farm's estate itself but the lease on the estate.
In much of Europe, serfdom was abolished only in the modern period, in Western Europe after the [[French Revolution]], in Russia [[Serfdom in Russia|as late as in 1861]].

In contrast to the Roman system of ''latifundia'' and the derived system of manoralism, the [[Germanic peoples]] had a system based on heritable estates owned by individual [[sibb|families or clans]]. 
The Germanic term for "heritable estate, [[:wikt:allodium|allodium]]" was ''*ōþalan'' ([[Old English]] ''[[:wikt:eþel|ēþel]]''), which incidentally was also used as a [[Odal (rune)|rune name]]; the gnomic verse on this term in the [[Anglo-Saxon rune poem]] reads:
:''{{lang|ang|[Ēðel] byþ oferleof æghwylcum men, gif he mot ðær rihtes and gerysena on brucan on bolde bleadum oftast.}}'' 
:"[An estate] is very dear to every man, if he can enjoy there in his house  whatever is right and proper in constant prosperity."

In the inheritance system known as [[Salic patrimony]] (also ''[[gavelkind]]'' in its exceptional survival in medieval Kent)
refers to this  [[clan]]-based possession of [[real estate]] property, particularly in [[Germanic peoples|Germanic]] context. ''Terra salica'' could not be sold or otherwise disposed; it was not [[Alienation (property law)|alienable]].   
Much of [[Germanic peoples|Germanic Europe]] has a history of overlap or conflict between the feudal system of manoralism, where the estate is owned by noblemen and leased to the tenants or worked by serfs, and the Germanic system of free farmers working landed estates heritable within their clan or family. Historical prevalence of the Germanic system of independent estates or ''Höfe'' resulted in  [[dispersed settlement]] (''Streusiedlung'')  structure, as opposed to the [[village]]-centered settlements of manoralism.

[[File:Beowulf - hofe.jpg|thumb|Mention of "hofe" in ''[[Beowulf]]'']]
In [[German-speaking Europe]], a farmyard is known as a ''Hof''; in modern German this word designates the area enclosed by the farm buildings, not the fields around them, and it is also used in other everyday situations for courtyards of any type (''Hinterhof'' = 'back yard', etc.). The recharacterized compound ''Bauernhof'' was formed in the early modern period to designate family farming estates and today is the most common word for 'farm', while the archaic ''Meierhof'' designated a manorial estate. Historically, the unmarked term ''Hof'' was increasingly used for the [[court (royal)|royal or noble court]].<ref>[[Johann Christoph Adelung]], [http://lexika.digitale-sammlungen.de/adelung/lemma/bsb00009131_4_0_641 Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch] (1774).</ref>
The estate as a whole is referred to by the collective ''Gehöft'' (15th century); the corresponding Slavic concept being ''[[Khutor]]''.
''Höfeordnung'' is the German legal term for the inheritance laws regarding family farms, deriving from inheritance under medieval [[Saxon law]]. 
In England, the title of [[yeoman]] was applied to such land-owning commoners from the 15th century.

In the early modern and modern period, the dissolution of manoralism went parallel to the development of [[intensive farming]] parallel to the [[Industrial Revolution]]. [[Mechanization]] enabled the cultivation of much larger areas than what was typical for the traditional estates aimed at [[subsistence farming]], resulting in the emergence of a smaller number of large farms, with the displaced population partly contributing to the new class of [[Wage labour|industrial wage-labourers]] and partly emigrating to the [[New World]] or the [[Russian Empire]] (following the [[serfdom in Russia|1861 emancipation of the serfs]]). The family farms established in Imperial Russia were again [[Collectivization in the Soviet Union|collectivized under the Soviet Union]], but the emigration of European farmers displaced by the Industrial Revolution contributed to the emergence of a system of family estates in the Americas ([[Homestead Act of 1862]]).

[[Thomas Jefferson]]'s argument that a large number of family estates are a factor in ensuring the stability of [[democracy]] was repeatedly used in support of subsidies.<ref>{{cite book |first=E. Wesley F. |last=Peterson |title=A Billion Dollars a Day: The Economics and Politics of Agricultural Subsidies |location= |publisher=Wiley-Blackwell |year=2009 |page=127s }}</ref>