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Debates on rural modernization have long opposed collectivized farming to individual and family farming. Little consideration has been afforded to the possibility of a median solution, and agricultural cooperation is limited to either providing technical and marketing services to independent households or organizing production collectively in order to guarantee both the efficiency of large-scale farms and the redistribution of profits. Nevertheless, the interest that collective leasing generated at the beginning of the 20th century reveals to what extent this separation is fictitious. In the years before World War I, Italy was identified as the cradle of these types of agricultural cooperatives that constituted a form of laboratory that proved to be of great interest to foreign observers. Unlike traditional historical approaches that adopt political perspectives to study such organizations, this article discusses the origins and the model for the joint leasing of land by examining debates about rural modernization and their international impact. It analyzes how local agrarian systems influenced the development of these cooperatives, their internal organization (individual or collective farming), and the social categories involved (agricultural workers, small farmers or sharecroppers). Finally, through specific examples, it describes how cooperative landholdings operated, and how farmers-cooperators could adapt this form of collective agency in accordance with their individual priorities and local issues.