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There were two types of decline in Roman agriculture at two different times in the history of the Romans.

One was the loss of farms by small peasant farmers following the Second Punic War, where Hannibal invaded Italy. Their farms either were ravaged in the war of had become neglected because of prolonged military service during the war. The owners of the large landed estates took advantage of this to buy land on the cheap. The war also greatly increased the supply of slave labour because the slaves were enslaved war captives. Abundant Slave labour helped to enable the rich landowners to expand their holdings and the expense of the peasants. The landless peasants flocked to Rome and lived in abject poverty because there were not many jobs for them.

The other one was the decline of commercial farming and the rise of servile farm labour during the Crisis of the Third Century. This was a military and economic crisis. Economically there was a breakdown in trade due to hyperinflation which was caused by the Roman coins coming to have hardly any value and being useless as a means of exchange. This also led to the collapse of the urban economy because the economy of many cities was geared for the production of manufactures for long distance trade. The owners of the large landed estates stopped producing for commercial exports to the cities and and switched to production for local barter. Many urban people had to migrate to the countryside to find work. The owners of the large landed estates took them on as servile labour, which meant that they were serfs of the landlord and lost their rights. This laid the foundation for serfdom in the Middle Ages.

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