The section dedicated to agriculture shows some examples from the collection of the Vallombrosa Forestry Institute, the origin of the current School of Agriculture. The books exhibited are especially representative and laid the foundations of the studies in forestry and agricultural sciences in Italy.
Among other authors, Pietro Crescenzio is considered to be the greatest agronomist of the Middle Ages, whereas Agostino Gallo was the protagonist of sixteenth-century agronomy. The agricultural treatises of Pietro Crescenzio and Agostino Gallo mark the development of European agronomic literature in the years from 1300 to 1600, when these works enjoyed intense circulation in hand-copied form and then in print, in their original language or in translated versions, within a European realm of knowledge in which Italy played an avant-garde role. These works were at the basis of a true revival of agricultural knowledge, in the double meaning of receiving the ancient legacy and of new beginnings.
Within the agricultural exploitation of the territory, the topic of water regulation was an integral part of it. This is exemplified in the exhibition by two texts on hydraulic engineering, one from the Library of Agriculture, the other from Engineering, focussed on the problems of the protection of fields from floods.
