AGRICULTURE.

The history of European agriculture in the era of industrialization and urbanization since the mid-nineteenth century is a history of an increasing loss of economic importance in every European national economy and at the same time a history of unprecedented success in increasing productivity. On the eve of World War I only 50 percent of the European population was dependent for a living on agriculture. An increasing number of people were attracted by the cities with their growing industry and new technical infrastructures. The new industries needed laborers. Also, a growing number of people emigrated from Europe to North and South America, Australia, and New Zealand.

Dramatic population growth paralleled rising per capita incomes. In many rural areas throughout Europe it was the first time in history that people had a real chance for a better life. In contrast to the situation in the United States or Canada, arable land and pastures in Europe were always a limited and valuable good. The system of agriculture was adapted to the natural and socioeconomic situation. The result was a complicated pattern of very different types of settlement structures and land use. Typical cultural landscapes dominated many regions of Europe: the bocage, or pastures framed by hedgerows, of Western Europe; the dehesas in Spain, areas with cork oak trees and pastures underneath, where large numbers of pigs can be raised; and extensively used grasslands, as in Hungary. Special cultures are still very typical of the unique diversity of agrarian landscapes in Europe. They include the cultivation of olive trees around the Mediterranean Sea, the use of terraced vineyards in the river valleys of Southern and Central Europe, and alpine pasture systems in the Alps, the Pyrenees, and other mountainous areas.

Until the 1950s woodlands in all forms had a very important additional role in rural economies. Woodland areas were the source for fuelwood and humus. Also, acorns, beechnuts, and fresh leaves were widely used, together with hay from the meadows, for feeding animals. In a long process that took more than half a century, this older type of fodder supply from nearby sources was replaced by mixed fodder and new forage plants like corn.

Animal-husbandry practices became ever more dependent on the knowledge of veterinary medicine as the scale of livestock breeding grew. Research from the emerging natural sciences—biology, entomology, and botany—helped to increase yields of crops and animal products. Industrial chemical insecticides were introduced in the first half of the twentieth century. One of the best-known was DDT. A Swiss chemist, Paul Hermann Müller (1899–1965), discovered the nature of DDT as an insecticide in 1939. First used against the mosquitoes that cause malaria, it was later deployed against other pests, such as the Colorado potato beetle, which was introduced in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The use of DDT increased the yields of many crops significantly until 1962, when Rachel Carson published her landmark book Silent Spring. Ten years later DDT was banned in the United States, and was then banned in Europe until the 1990s.

Chemical fertilizers were also introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century, when the use of natural saltpeter was replaced by the extraction of anhydrous ammonia from the air, a chemical process developed between 1905 and 1913 by the German scientists Fritz Haber (1868–1934) and Carl Bosch (1874–1940). The lack of organic matter in European soil had historically caused marginal yields and periodic harvest failure. This was no longer the case after the new applied chemistry emerged. Systematic plant breeding also contributed to higher yields. One of the early success stories of plant breeding was the dramatic increase of the sugar content of the sugar beet. Alterations of other crops, including cereals and potatoes, followed.

First attempts at the mechanization of agricultural production processes were made in the nineteenth century. Many of them failed due to the lack of appropriate power sources. The steam engine was only used for big plows. With the advent of the gasoline engine and later with the invention of the diesel engine, it was possible to mechanize nearly all these processes. The tractor became the universal engine for transporting agricultural goods. Despite all their advantages, however, tractors were too expensive for the majority of European farmers. For this reason agriculture was a latecomer in adopting innovations from science and technology until the 1950s. In the first half of the twentieth century modernized and highly mechanized big farms could frequently be found alongside small farms with no machines and no use of fertilizers and pesticides. Generally the use of specialized agricultural machinery was more evident in western and northern Europe than in eastern and southern Europe.

There were great differences in the socioeconomic situation of the rural population at the beginning of the twentieth century. The northern and western parts of Europe were dominated historically by small and more-or-less free farmers; in eastern Europe large areas were dominated by the estates of the landed elite, as in the eastern parts of the kingdom of Prussia and in Russia. Members of these aristocratic families played a very influential role in politics and the armed forces of these countries until later in the twentieth century.

There were different forms of tenancy and various titles of agrarian inheritance. The Mediterranean forms of tenancy, the mezzadria in Italy and the métayage in France, are distinctive. In these forms of tenancy, a tenant signed only short contracts with the owner, who made the farm buildings, the land, tools, and animals available to the tenant, who was thus a kind of farmworker. The tenant had to give one-half of the yields to the owner. The mezzadria system in Italy was dissolved after World War II.

In the northwestern parts of Europe the tenant signed longer contracts and had to pay money for the tenancy. At the beginning of the nineteenth century many feudal laws were dissolved, and the number of free farmers who were property owners in a modern sense increased in many countries. The titles of inheritance also were different. In some parts of Germany, for example, the whole farm with the land, fixtures, and livestock was given to the eldest or the youngest son. This title of inheritance was called Anerbenrecht. In those areas, as in northern and western Germany, the farms remained relatively large until the mid-twentieth century. In other regions, typically in southwestern Germany, another title of inheritance, the Realteilungsrecht, was predominant. In this case the farm was divided into equal parts for every child. This caused field patterns in which the arable land was typically scattered in small strips. Scattered villages with small farms and houses were also common. In those areas overpopulation was characteristic at the end of the nineteenth century.

Before 1914 agriculture became a part of a globalized economy. The advent of new agrarian suppliers, including the former colonies, lowered prices. In this situation most European countries tried to save their farmers through the use of protective tariffs. Only in some countries, like Great Britain, did the idea of a free market prevail. But the conflict between the free market and the protection of European agriculture by tariffs and treaties is still a live issue.

WORLD WAR I

World War I had a deep impact on European agriculture. Many farmers had to serve in the armies, and many of them never came back. In Germany alone two million of more than three million farm-workers and farmers had to leave their farms and villages for a long time. Yields of many crops decreased and feeding livestock became a serious problem. In many European countries bureaucracies were established to organize agricultural production and the distribution of agricultural goods. In Germany the Kriegsernährungsamt (war food department) was responsible for the food supply. But this office failed. Due to food shortages, harsh weather conditions, and the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic, 750,000 civilians died in Germany during the war.

The aftermath of the war was catastrophic. Some regions, such a northern France, were entirely destroyed. Many rural people had to leave their homelands in Greece and Turkey. Revolution, civil war in Russia, and the establishment and nation-building of many new countries in central and southeastern Europe caused huge problems for rural people. Germany lost 13 percent of its territory, mainly fertile agrarian regions such as Upper Silesia and western Prussia. Austria-Hungary was divided into several countries with different political and socioeconomic conditions underlying rural life.

INTERWAR PERIOD AND WORLD WAR II

European countries had to deal with the consequences of the war. Damaged farmland had to be restored, particularly in France and Belgium. In many countries an active agrarian-settlement policy was set up. The main goal was to ensure the food supply and to help former soldiers and unemployed industrial workers and their families. In 1919 the Reich Settlement Act of the young German democracy was formulated. Within the next years several thousand new farms were established. After the Treaty of Sèvres in 1920 and the subsequent war between Greece and Turkey hundreds of thousands of refugees had to be settled both in Greece and Turkey. With the assistance of the League of Nations a successful settlement program was initiated.

In the Soviet Union radical land reform and collectivization took place with incalcuable costs, both material and human. The kulak, or private farmer, was eliminated.

In 1939 Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) went to war in 1939 first against Poland with the idea of conquering Lebensraum (living space) for the German people. This objective was also an argument for the war against the Soviet Union in 1941. Influential agrarian politicians such as the secretary of agriculture, Herbert Backe (1896–1947), and the leading agricultural scientist Konrad Meyer (1901–1973) formulated plans and programs such as the Generalplan Ost for agrarian settlements of German farmers in the conquered areas. These plans were an integral part of the Holocaust and the agrarian exploitation of eastern Europe for the food supply of Germany during the war.

A DIVIDED CONTINENT AND A DIVIDED AGRICULTURAL HISTORY

The first years after World War II were characterized by hunger and devastation of wide parts of the agricultural economy. Millions of people, living in ruins in the cities or as refugees all over Europe, tried to survive on the produce of small garden plots or by dealing on the countless black markets.

The agricultural history of Europe in the decades following the 1940s can be seen as a part of the history of the Cold War. With the erection of the "Iron Curtain" Europe was divided until 1989 into two politically and ideologically separated parts.

In Eastern Europe the traditional structure of landownership was fundamentally changed in every country. Land reform and waves of collectivization formed a new system of agriculture with big cooperative or state-owned farms. The traditional farmer on the small farm, who worked independently and within a rural community of other farmers, vanished as a socioeconomic type. These farmers became agricultural workers on big farms, controlled by a small number of executives with an academic background and membership in the Communist Party. It is quite clear that this development shaped rural villages. Ironically these deep changes preserved older settlement structures and the architectural heritage of the preindustrial period better than in Western Europe.

Western Europe went another way. In general, land ownership remained untouched. But with the foundation of the European Union in 1957 and the establishment of a "common agrarian policy" after the Stresa Conference in July 1958 agriculture was removed from the free market. Instead of trade and industry, European agriculture became a closed system intended to protect small farmers. Nevertheless the decades from the 1950s onward were a time of an unprecedented loss of farms and jobs in agriculture. As early as 1968 the Dutch politician and later Commissioner of the EU, Sicco Mansholt (1908–1995), published a plan in which he proposed to close most of the small farms. This plan caused many public protests. As of 2006 in Western Europe only 2.7 percent of all employees work in agriculture. In the area of the eastern enlargement of the EU the figure is 13 percent.

For the first time in history all aspects of agriculture were fully mechanized and modernized. Consequently yields increased by leaps and bounds. Beginning in the 1970s the ecological consequences of highly industrialized agriculture increasingly became a controversial topic of public debate. In the 1980s organic farming became popular. With the "Slow Food" movement, which started in Italy in 1986, a new facet was added to criticisms of industrialized agriculture. The main idea is to preserve the diversity of traditional types of foodstuffs.

1989 AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

With the end of the Cold War in 1989 the situation of agriculture changed. The signature of this period is the triumph of capitalist agriculture. In all the eastern and southeastern countries formerly state-owned and collective farms were dissolved and sold to private owners or agrarian entrepreneurs from the West who ran huge farms with modern machinery.

Countries with very different agrarian traditions joined the EU over the course of several enlargements: in 1989 (former German Democratic Republic); 1995 (Austria, Sweden, Finland); and 2004 (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta, and Cyprus). During these years the reform of the common agrarian market was one of the main political issues within the EU. It is believed that lowering subsidies and creating new political instruments should help to develop the rural peripheries of many European countries; protect agrarian landscapes with their historical, cultural, and ecological values; and lower tariff barriers. A fundamental change in agrarian policy was initiated in 2003 when agricultural subsidies were phased out as an economic strategy. Overproduction has diminished, but year after year the common agricultural policy comes under scrutiny. Its future is uncertain.

See alsoAgrarian Parties; Common Agricultural Policy; European Union; France; Germany; Italy; Land Reform; Mad Cow Disease; World War I; World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alexander, Derek W., and Michael Drake. Breaking New Ground: Fifty Years of Change in Northern Ireland Agriculture 1952–2002. Belfast, 2002.

Almås, Reidar, et al., eds. Norwegian Agricultural History. Trondheim, 2004.

Blomme, Jan. The Economic Development of Belgian Agriculture 1880–1980: A Quantitative and Qualitative Analysis. Leuven, 1993.

Brown, Jonathan. Agriculture in England. A Survey of Farming 1870–1947. Manchester, U.K., and Wolfeboro, N.H., 1987.

Campbell, Bruce M., and Mark Overton. Land, Labour and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity. Manchester, U.K., and New York, 1991.

Campbell, Fergus J. M. Land and Revolution: Nationalist Politics in the West of Ireland 1891–1921. Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2005.

Chubarov, Alexander. Russia's Bitter Path to Modernity: A History of the Soviet and Post-Soviet Eras. New York, 2001.

Cleary, M. C. Peasants, Politicians and Producers: The Organisation of Agriculture in France since 1918. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1989.

Clout, Hugh. After the Ruins: Restoring the Countryside of Northern France after the Great War. Exeter, U.K., 1996.

Conquest, Robert. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivisation and the Terror-Famine. London, 1986.

Corni, Gustavo. Hitler and the Peasants: Agrarian Policy of the Third Reich 1930–1939. New York, 1990.

Davies, R. W., and Stephen G. Wheatcroft, eds. The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933. New York, 2003.

Estók, János. History of Hungarian Agriculture and Rural Life 1848–2004. Budapest, 2004.

Farquharson, J. E. The Plough and the Swastika: The NSDAP and Agriculture in Germany 1928–45. Wayne, Pa. 1992.

Federico, Giovanni. Feeding the World: An Economic History of Agriculture 1800–2000. Princeton, N.J., 2005.

Fogel, Robert William. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100: Europe, America and the Third World. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2004.

Grigg, David. The Transformation of Agriculture in the West. Oxford, U.K., 1992.

Harding, Susan Friend. Remaking Ibieca: Rural Life in Aragon under Franco. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1984.

Heinzen, James W. Inventing a Soviet Countryside: State Power and the Transformation of Rural Russia 1917–1929. Pittsburgh, Pa., 2004.

Jones, Eric. The European Miracle: Environments, Economies, and Geopolitics in the History of Europe and Asia. 3rd ed. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 2003.

Köll, Anu-Mai. Peasants on the World Market: Agricultural Experience of Independent Estonia 1919–1939. Stockholm, 1994.

Leigh, G. J. The World's Greatest Fix: A History of Nitrogen and Agriculture. Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2004.

Moeller, Robert G. German Peasants and Agrarian Politics 1914–1924: The Rhineland and Westphalia. Chapel Hill, N.C., 1986.

Offer, Avner. World War I: An Agrarian Interpretation. Oxford, U.K., and New York, 1989.

Orwin, Christabel S., and Edith H. Whetham. History of British Agriculture, 1846–1914. Hamden, Conn., 1964.

Perren, Richard. Agriculture in Depression 1870–1940. Cambridge, U.K., 1995.

Perry, P. J., ed. British Agriculture 1875–1914. London, 1973.

Robinson, Guy M. West Midlands Farming, 1840's to 1970's: Agricultural Change in the Period between the Corn Laws and the Common Market. Cambridge, U.K., 1983.

Sereni, Emilio. History of the Italian Agricultural Landscape. Translated with an introduction by R. Burr Litchfield. Princeton, N.J., 1997.

Simpson, James. Spanish Agriculture: The Long Siesta, 1765–1965. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1995.

Viola, Lynne, et al., eds. The War against the Peasantry 1927–1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside. New Haven, Conn., 2005.

Wilt, Alan F. Food for War: Agriculture and Rearmament in Britain before World War II. Oxford, U.K., and New York, 2001.

Andreas Dix