Why are latifundias seen to have a negative impact on the development of a country as well as its environment?

considerable social and political power and providing them with the income needed to support a lavish lifestyle.

To become the owner of a latifundium did not require much capital. Through ways more or less legal, latifundisti appropriated lands from the public domain and took over the holdings of poor peasants. The size of latifundia varied: from 600 acres in ancient Rome, which guaranteed the owner a senatorial seat, to the estates of Polish magnates extending over 250,000 acres, to those of hacendados in Mexico of over half a million. From the beginning, latifundia were commercial enterprises dedicated primarily to growing produce and livestock for profit, both for distant and nearby urban markets. In On Agriculture, Cato the Elder (234-149 bce) emphasized the importance of latifundia being located near good roads and waterways so as to get the crops to their markets. All later forms of latifundia-haciendas, plantations, and Balkan chifliks - followed the same model and reproduced the same form of class domination: a paternalistic landlord ruling over a mass of laborers-slaves, landless peasants, manorial serfs, or peons. Latifundisti maintained political control in the provinces as well, despite being absentee landlords who resided in urban centers and left management of their estates to villici, or hired administrators.