Francesco Aventi

Francesco Aventi is a scholar of agricultural problems who, after visiting the island in spring 1869, wrote an essay in the form of letters, fourteen in all, addressed to Professor Francesco Luigi Botter, director of the “Journal of Agriculture of the Kingdom of Italy” - a fortnightly specialized in the subject - who will then collect them all together with a small preface in the twelfth volume, published in that same year.
His is an agrarian survey, initially born as a study of the project for the colonization of the Coghinas Valley, promoted in those years, and then extended to other parts of the territory, considered from the agronomist's point of view as virgin, uncontaminated, where the margin of progress of the technique is very vast, where “everything is to be done, everything to be innovated, to parallel the knowledge and agrarian progress of several Provinces of the Continent”.
Written in the form of a diary, the narrative begins on April 25 with the arrival in Caprera, in front of whose beauties Aventi feels trapped in the role of an agricultural observer, and would like to tell his experience “minute by minute”, not focusing only on statistical aspects. In Caprera, he was welcomed by the exile Garibaldi, with whom he had lunch and visited the fruit trees surrounding the house, before seeing and describing in detail the mechanisms of a functional windmill.
The work focuses on the description of the crops and on the indication of the major problems that limit their development, on the composition of the soils, on the character of the rivers and the state of the waters, but at the bottom there are observations on the life and customs of the people encountered in the various countries, which make the work more smooth. The years are those of the Commission of Inquiry to which Aventi entrusts the hopes of rebirth, first of all with the eradication of malaria, to which it returns often, highlighting the damage - social and economic - due to the “Sardinian bad weather”. “Sardinia feels the urgent need of a population. Sardinia should be colonized but it will never have a useful colony if we do not start from the base, that is, to improve the air with all the means in our power.” He also refers to this topic in the conclusion, in the tones of a heartfelt appeal: “go on a journey of roses for those who want to travel to your island, but you will not find anyone who wants to travel it or even less stop, if at any rate malaria disgusts him, softens him, kills him”.

Update

25/6/2026 - 13:34