38 ITAI^Y - CREDIT 



In recent months many measures have been passed in Italy which aim 

 at encouraging agricultural production and largely increasing agricultural 

 credit. We think it opportune to notice them briefly. 



§ I. The decrees of 10 may and 20 and 30 juxe 1917. 



The decree of 10 May 1917, No. 788, contains, as we already noticed in 

 our issue for last July, a series of provision aimed essentialh^ at intensifying 

 the cultivation of cereals and other foodstuffs. In the matter of credit it 

 authorizes the institutions of agricultural, ordinary and co-operative credit, 

 the ordinary savings-banks, the Monti di Pietd and Monti Frumentari and 

 the agricultural loan funds to grant loans for cultivating corn, other cereals, 

 vegetables and edible root crops, independently of any provision of laws, 

 rules or by-laws, and in the measure and for the terms required in indivi- 

 dual cases, according to whether cultivation is intensive or extensive and 

 according to the time in which crops ripen. It should be noted how oppor- 

 tunely the decree makes an appeal for the attainment of its goal not only 

 to special institutions of agricultural credit but also to the other institu- 

 tions of credit we have named. 



The loans granted for such cultivation are, by one of the notable in- 

 novations in the sphere of agricultural credit, secured by a legal privilege 

 which no longers bears, as in the past, on a single product, but indiscri- 

 minately on all products of a farm, including hanging fruits and provisions 

 produced on the farm and stored in the dwelling-house and annexed build- 

 ings. This privilege need not be specially stipulated but arises from the 

 single fact of the concession of the loan and has legal force without a 

 particular agreement between the parties concerned. 



Hitherto, on the other hand, loans for seeds, for cultivation and the 

 harvest and for the acquisition of manures and fertilizers have enjoyed the 

 privilege established by Clause 5 of Article 1958 of the Italian civil code, 

 a privilege bearing on the single product for the benefit of which the sum 

 or material lent was intended. In order to have a wider security institu- 

 tions affording agricultural credit have had to make with the borrower a 

 special agreement constituting a privilege in the terms of Clause i of the 

 law of 23 January 1887, No. 4276 ; and thus it has been possible to create 

 a privilege falling on the same objects as those on which the tenant's pri- 

 vilege is exercised in virtue of Clause 3 of the Article 1958 already- cited. 

 The decree with which we are now concerned provides, as has been said, 

 that without formalit}^ or expense the privilege becomes the right of the 

 lending institution. 



The aforesaid loans are in the form of bills on which the purpose of the 

 loans and the farm for which they are lent must be indicated. 



The law of 1887 (Article 10) further proA'ides that if a debtor alienate 

 the propertj' subject to the privilege without replacing it or allow it to 

 deteriorate gravely or abandon the cultivation of his farm, or in any way, 

 by his fraud or fault, notably diminish the security of the creditor insti- 



