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- Convenors:
-
Jennifer Bonnell
(York University)
Joshua MacFadyen (University of Prince Edward Island)
David Hsiung (Juniata College)
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- Chairs:
-
Jennifer Bonnell
(York University)
Joshua MacFadyen (University of Prince Edward Island)
- Formats:
- Panel
- Streams:
- Nature for Harvest: Commodities and Resources
- Location:
- Room 16
- Sessions:
- Friday 23 August, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Helsinki
Short Abstract:
This interdisciplinary panel examines changing human practices and periods of ecological transition in the cultural landscapes co-created by human agriculturalists and foraging livestock in Canada, the US, and central and northern Europe.
Long Abstract:
This interdisciplinary panel examines changing human practices and periods of ecological transition in the cultural landscapes co-created by human agriculturalists and foraging livestock in Canada, the northern US, Ireland, Poland, and Scandinavia. Ecologist Ove Eriksson (Stockholm University, Sweden) explores periods of transition in the 6000-year history of livestock forage in Scandinavia, the legacies of these practices on the landscape today, and the possibilities that enduring semi-natural grasslands present for future food production and biodiversity conservation. Archaeologist and climate historian Eugene Costello (University College Cork, Ireland) looks to intersections between environmental change and changing livestock foraging strategies in the upland environments of Ireland and Sweden from the medieval period to the nineteenth century. Joshua MacFadyen (University of Prince Edward Island, Canada) draws upon census manuscripts and farm diaries to show how rural Canadians experienced a period of organic intensification from the mid nineteenth century to the interwar period, using more intensive forage practices and smaller amounts of land to produce more food. Turning to Poland, Tomasz Samojlik (Mammal Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences) examines tensions between cattle pasturing and forest management in the ecological history of the Białowieża Primeval Forest over the nineteenth century. Finally, Jennifer Bonnell (York University, Canada) turns to a different kind of forager in her examination of beekeeper responses to changing honeybee forage in the modernizing agricultural landscapes of the transnational Great Lakes Region in the early twentieth century.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 23 August, 2024, -Paper short abstract:
This paper is concerned with cattle, sheep and goats and where and how they were grazed in north-west European uplands from late medieval times up to the 19th century. I will discuss the various sources of evidence for livestock foraging and I will assess its long-term impacts on upland habitats.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will discuss where cattle, sheep and goats were grazed in uplands from the late medieval period up to the 19th century. My focus will be on Ireland and Sweden, but I will be citing examples from elsewhere in Europe as well. I will consider the various kinds of pasture that livestock found forage in, be it woodland, lower pastures in foothills or higher mountain pastures, and I will discuss potential environmental reasons for supplementing forage with fodder that had been collected or grown by livestock owners and herders. I will ask what role climatic and economic factors played in decisions to alter foraging strategies over the medieval-to-modern transition and I will mention the long-term impacts of foraging on upland habitats over time. The paper will argue that in many so-called 'peripheral' regions we can only broach the subject of pre-modern livestock foraging by using a complex mixture of documentary, archaeological, toponymic and palaeoecological evidence. But the holistic picture of change that this interdisciplinary approach can give is highly rewarding.
Paper short abstract:
Using a microdata sample from the First Census of Canada (1871), this paper examines the land use patterns from Ontario to Nova Scotia at confederation. As herds expanded rapidly and reached a peak in 1906, farmers and scientists modified their practices to expand the nation's forage systems.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines the changing role of forage practices and animal land use in Canada from the mid nineteenth century to the interwar period. Using census manuscripts and farm diaries from Ontario to Nova Scotia, the paper shows how rural Canadians experienced a period of organic intensification, where farmers and non-human animals began to produce more food and traction power for Canadians using diminishing amounts of "new land" and more intensive forage practices. Using a new microdata sample of the agricultural schedules of the First Census of Canada (1871), it is now possible to map the relationships between individual ruminant livestock types and various land use practices such as pasture, woodland, and marsh or other wildlands. This provides a quantitative snapshot of the land use and the landscapes co-created by human agriculturalists and foraging livestock in Canada at the moment of confederation. However, Eastern Canadian livestock herds expanded rapidly over the next three decades, reaching a peak in 1906 and straining the nation's feed and fodder systems. Building on the census records, a more qualitative study of farm practice is available in the reports and scientific correspondence of the Central Experimental Farm in Ottawa, and of the "Merite Agricole" agricultural competition in Quebec (both spanning the decades 1890-1930). In Atlantic Canada, the use of grasses found in salt marshes, sand dunes, and offshore islands, were another important resource for grazing livestock until imported feed grains began to displace the demand for local forage.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper we will analyse the changes in Spanish livestock in the period of industrialization of agriculture. We will show the change from a livestock farming integrated with agriculture to a specialised one with strong environmental and social impacts.
Paper long abstract:
Previous studies of Social Metabolism of Spanish agriculture during the 20th century has shown that the process of livestock specialisation has played a leading role in the changes brought about by industrialisation process. In this paper we aim to analyse in depth the transformations in Spanish livestock farming up to the present day, taking into account both bio-physical changes and economic and social changes in an integrated way. Livestock intensification and specialisation, driven initially by changes in the Spanish diet and, more recently, by growth in exports, has led to a reorientation of Spanish agricultural metabolism towards livestock production. But, at the same time, the growth of livestock, especially monogastric livestock, has only been possible thanks to the growing import of livestock feed, increasing the dependence and fragility of Spanish agriculture. From a socio-economic point of view, the process of livestock specialisation has been built on intensive livestock farming methods (feedlots), almost completely detached from the territory and with a massive use of external inputs, a constant increase in the size of livestock farms and strong negative environmental impacts. The growing prevalence of this production model has led to the destruction of thousands of pastoral livestock farms, a decrease in the number of jobs and has facilitated the depopulation in the Spanish inland areas with few productive alternatives.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines beekeeper responses to the changing nature and extent of honeybee forage in the modernizing agricultural landscapes of North America’s Great Lakes region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Paper long abstract:
This paper examines beekeeper responses to the changing nature and extent of “bee pasture” in North America’s Great Lakes region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Drawing upon regular and lively correspondence within beekeeping periodicals and association records in the Canadian province of Ontario and neighbouring US states, it explores beekeeper efforts to increase the extent of nectar-producing plants and trees through advocacy efforts with neighbouring farmers and surreptitious sowing of “honey plants” along roadsides and uncultivated lands. Deforestation throughout the region by the late nineteenth century had removed important sources of bee forage, such as native basswood, maple, and tulip poplar trees. In response to these changes, beekeepers engaged in tree-planting campaigns in urban and rural settings and promoted the value of nectar-producing cover crops such as alsike and sweet clover, alfalfa, and buckwheat as forage for hoofed livestock and honeybees alike. Aligning their interests with those of neighbouring livestock producers proved an effective strategy for expanding bee pasture in the decades before the Great Depression. Changing agricultural practices in the wake of the Depression years, however, would ultimately reduce the extent and variety of honeybee forage and contribute to reductions in the number of beekeepers and honeybee colonies across the Great Lakes Region by 1940.
Paper short abstract:
In the late 19th century, reindeer and reindeer herders were brought to Alaska first from Siberia and later from Norway. The impacts of introducing reindeer on Natives’ health and economy, on Alaska’s development, on the European herders’ lives, and on the environment in Alaska are considered.
Paper long abstract:
In the late 19th century, reindeer and reindeer herders were brought to Alaska first from Siberia and later from Norway. At the beginning, the idea was to “civilize” Alaska Natives with reindeer herding. In contemporary thinking agriculture, settlement, Christianity, and civilization were strongly linked together. Later, the focused shifted to supporting Natives with this new way of life to support themselves, but grazing lands and ownership questions created constant issues between Alaska Natives, white reindeer owners, the original teachers brought from Norway, who were mostly Sámi, and their descendants. In this paper, the impacts of introducing reindeer on Natives health and economic, on Alaska’s development, on the European herders’ lives, and on the environment in Alaska are considered.
Paper short abstract:
Pasturing of livestock has had profound consequences for Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), where it was a part of traditional forest use. Historical sources allow to retrace changes and tensions connected with forest cattle pasturing , along with ecological impact of cattle presence in BPF.
Paper long abstract:
Pasturing of livestock has had profound consequences for Europe’s landscapes, including forests. In Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), currently straddling the Polish-Belorussian border, cattle pasturing was a part of traditional forest use that ceased only in the second half of the 20th century. Historical sources contain information on the institutional changes governing forest cattle pasturing and social tensions connected with that, changes in spatial extent of cattle presence and cattle numbers in BPF in the last two centuries. The spatial extent of cattle pasturing was highly variable, with the distribution of grazing areas frequently changing. Forest near villages (constituting less than 10% of the area) was most often used for cattle grazing during continued longer time periods. Analysis of this information allows to draw conclusions on cattle impact on forest regeneration, which is not as straightforward as previously thought: the frequent changes that occurred in the extent of cattle grazing indicate that their impact occurred locally, was smaller in other less intensively used areas, and in the forest as a whole.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on plants – in many versions - on a Danish estate around 1800, exploring the tensions between plants construed as botanical specimens by the owner, a prominent botanist, and plants as crops in the transformation of the estate into a plantationocene landscape.
Paper long abstract:
In an old account book of expenditures and income and work done and to be done at Bistrup Gård, an estate in Zealand, Denmark, from 1806, a tiny, dried plant is placed between some of the many pages of accounts of money earned and spend through the operation of the estate as an indication of the owner's botanical interest. Niels Hofman-Bang was not only a patron of botanists as a generous host but was also a prominent botanist himself and especially renowned for his studies of algae and their capacities in transforming shallow water into fertile land. At the same time, he was one of the most famous agricultural reformers, and the purchase of Bistrup Gaard aimed precisely at experimenting with new, market-oriented modes of operations that could not be done inside the existing social organization of work. What is noticeable is that these two practices; the botanical and the agricultural reformist, only very little and rarely actually met. In the paper, I discuss how and when these two rationales or practices would come together.