igration
George Thir had a busy year
in 1884.1
Along with his parents,
George and Theresia Thir, he emigrated
from the corner of central
Europe where today Austria, Hungary,
and Slovakia come together.
He travelled to the United States,
Sustaining Soil fertility:
Agricultural Practice
in the Old and New Worlds
Geoff Cunfer and fridolin Krausmann
He travelled to the United States,He travelled to the United States,
M
9
made his way to the far edge of agricultural settlement in western Kansas,
and selected a farm that would become his home for the remainder
of his life. Kansas had organized its westernmost territory just six
years earlier, including the Thirs’ new home of Decatur County. The
last conflict between Indians and encroaching white settlers in Kansas
occurred there in 1878, when fleeing Cheyennes attacked and killed
dozens of recent settlers. By the time the Thirs arrived the gently undulating
mixed-grass prairie of western Kansas was filling up with farmers.
Most came from eastern parts of the United States, but a significant
number came directly from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, and
other foreign countries. The Thirs most likely immigrated from Gols,
in what is now Austria, where most of their Kansas neighbors originated.
They certainly came from somewhere in the German-speaking
portion of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Over the course of his life
various official documents identified the younger George as German,
Hungarian, Austro-Hungarian, and Austrian. The Austro-Hungarians
who settled in the northwest corner of Decatur County, Kansas came
from a cluster of farming villages within 25 km of one another, including
Gols and Zurndorf in what is now Austria, and Ragendorf and
Kaltenstein in present-day Hungary.2
Born in May, 1865, George Thir
was 19 when he traveled to Kansas. Within a few months of arrival he
chose suitable farmland in Section 17 of Finley Township and, on October
9, 1884, filed a Homestead claim on 65 hectares of grass.3
1
This study is supported by U.S. National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development grants no. HD044889 and HD033554. The authors would
like to thank three anonymous reviewers who improved the article significantly.
2
For details on the emigration from this region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
see W. Dujmovits, Die Amerikawanderung der Burgenländer, Desch-Drexler,
Pinkafeld 1990; M. Antoni, “Nach Amerika….”, Materialien zur Landesausstellung
in Güssing, Pädagogisches Institut des Bundes für Burgenland, Eisenstadt 1992.
3
Decatur County Historical Book Committee, Decatur County, Kansas, Craftsman
Printers Inc., Lubbock, Texas 1983, pp. 25-31. Homestead records from
Kansas GenWeb, http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/decatur/Land%20Records/finley_homesteading.htm
(accessed February 16, 2009). The reconstruction of Thir
and Demmer family history comes from the following sources: U.S. Population
Census manuscript schedules, Decatur County, Kansas, 1880, 1900, 1910, 1920,
1930; Kansas State Board of Agriculture, population census manuscripts, Decatur
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 10
Makingrawprairieintoafarmwasslow,hardwork.InMarch,1885
the new homestead, valued at $50, had no cropland, no livestock, no
fences, and no house. Thir worked as a blacksmith and boarded with
neighbors—John and Gussie Adams, and Ray, their one-year-old son.
Thir had not really started farming his new land yet when the censustaker
recorded his presence in the spring of 1885, but the next ten
years would see considerable progress on the Thir farm.4
In 1888 George married Elizabeth Demmer; he was 23 and she
was 20. Born in Gols in 1868, at age 13 she and her family joined the
chain migration to far western Kansas. Between the 1870s and 1890s
dozens of families left Gols, Ragendorf, Zurndorf, and Kaltenstein
for the United States, travelling by ship across the Atlantic, then by
train to Nebraska. Many settled near Crete, Nebraska where a community
of Austro-Hungarian immigrants welcomed new arrivals.
The motivations for migration varied. Most sought free agricultural
land and an opportunity for economic improvement. Some fled the
military draft. In 1983, for example, Carl Resch recalled his grandfather’s
reason for leaving: “In 1883 John Resch Sr. immigrated to
America with his wife and children to escape conscription into the
army of Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria-Hungary, and in search
of good land and a better life—free from militarism that ravaged
Europe periodically.” Another Gols native, Andreas Wurm, had already
been drafted and discharged by the age of 17 when, in 1878,
he joined two friends travelling to Nebraska. Like many others, they
found Crete already full, and moved southwest to Decatur County,
Kansas where free land was still available. Not yet old enough to file
a homestead claim, Wurm brought his parents from Austria to Kansas
so they could file a claim for him.5
George’s new wife, Elizabeth Demmer, was also part of a multigenerational
migration. She was one of five children born to MathCounty,
Kansas, 1885, 1895, 1905, 1915, 1925, held at Kansas State Historical
Society, Topeka (hereafter cited as KSHS).
4
Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Population and Agricultural Census Manuscripts,
Decatur County, Kansas, 1885, held at KSHS.
5
Decatur County, Kansas cit., pp. 152, 204, 333-334, 351-352, 374, 425,
428-433.
11
ias and Maria Ecker Demmer. In 1881 the whole family moved to
Crete, Nebraska, and then on to Decatur County, Kansas. Several
other branches of the Demmer family made the move between the
late 1870s and mid-1880s, finding (and often intermarrying with)
former neighbors from Austria. Families from Gols, Ragendorf, and
Kaltenstein selected homesteads all around Finley Township, where
George and Elizabeth Thir made their new farm (Fig. 1). Elizabeth
gave birth to a daughter, Susie M. Thir, in January 1889. A second
daughter, born in May 1892, took her mother’s name. Their third
and final child, George, Jr., was born in May 1895. By that year the
farm, now worth $800, was thriving. It boasted cropland planted
to corn, spring wheat, sorghum, and potatoes, plus hay and grazing
land for 3 horses, 1 milk cow, and 1 hog.6
Over the next several decades, as the Thir children grew up, the
farm expanded. By 1905 it had doubled in size to 130 hectares, with
buildings, implements, a dozen milk cows, 10 beef cattle, 4 horses,
11 hogs, and a variety of cropland, hay land, and pasture, all worth
$2,000. Ten years later the farm had doubled in size again, to 259
hectares—one square mile of fertile Kansas farmland. The daughters
moved out of the family home in their early twenties to join new
husbands. George, Jr., remained single, continued to live with his
parents, and farmed in partnership with his father into the 1940s.
George, Sr., died in 1949 and Elizabeth in 1953.7
George and Elizabeth Thir did more than trade Alpine mountains
for vast plains when they migrated across the ocean. They left behind
an agro-ecological system in Austria where farmland supported high
populations on small holdings, where rainfall was reliable, where nu-
6
Decatur County, Kansas cit., pp. 152, 184, 374, 430. Standard Atlas of Decatur
County, Kansas, G.A. Ogle & Co., Chicago 1905, held at KSHS. Kansas State Board
of Agriculture, Population and Agricultural Census Manuscripts, Decatur County,
Kansas, 1895. More detailed information on population, livestock and land use for
Thir farm and Finley Township is provided in Supporting Table S1 and S2.
7
Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Population and Agricultural Census Manuscripts,
Decatur County, Kansas, 1905, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, 1940.
U.S. Population Census Manuscript Schedules, 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930. Herndon
Union Cemetery records, Rawlins County, Kansas.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 12
Figure 1. Austro-Hungarian immigrant farms, including
the Thir farm, situated within Finley Township. The small
locator maps show the location of Kansas within the
United States and of Decatur County and Finley Township
within the state of Kansas
FIGURES
To manuscript:
Cunfer, G. and F.Krausmann, Sustaining Soil Fertility: Agricultural Practice in the Old and New Worlds, submitted
to Global Environment, April 2009.
Figure 1. Austro-Hungarian immigrant farms, including the Thir farm, situated within Finley Township. The small locator
maps show the location of Kansas within the United States and of Decatur County and Finley Township within the state of
Kansas.
13
trients and energy flowed through tightly bound pathways linking
soil, plants, animals, and people into a complex and highly evolved
system. For centuries rural Austrians had pushed the land to produce
as much food as possible to support growing populations, but in a
way that could be sustained over many generations. In Austria, land
was scarce, labor (and hungry mouths) abundant. Livestock were a
crucial component of the system, providing food and clothing, but
also physical labor and manure to fertilize cropland.8
They arrived in an agro-ecological setting in Kansas that had immense
potential but little existing structure. There fertile soil was
abundant and cheap, labor hard to come by, and rainfall uncertain.
Population density was low, and even livestock were in short supply
and expensive. George and Elizabeth spent their lives creating a new
agro-ecological system where none had existed. They brought labor
to bear: their own strong backs plus three children and a barnyard
full of animals. They tapped into a rich stockpile of soil nutrients accumulated
under native grassland over geological time. They organized
a new farm system alongside neighbors from home and from
many different parts of the world, one that meshed their cultural
inheritance with a semi-arid plains environment. The result was very
different from the agricultural world they had left behind.
Agricultural systems are coupled human-environment systems.9
This study takes a socio-ecological perspective on agriculture and
focuses on biophysical relations between society and its natural en-
8
F. Krausmann, “Milk, Manure and Muscular Power: Livestock and the Industrialization
of Agriculture”, in Human Ecology, 32, 6, 2004.
9
H. Haberl, V. Winiwarter, K. Andersson, R.U. Ayres, C.G. Boone, A.
Castillio, G. Cunfer, M. Fischer-Kowalski, W.R. Freudenburg, E. Furman, R.
Kaufmann, F. Krausmann, E. Langthaler, H. Lotze-Campen, M. Mirtl, C.A. Redman,
A. Reenberg, A.D. Wardell, B. Warr, and H. Zechmeister, “From LTER to
LTSER: Conceptualizing the Socioeconomic Dimension of Long-term Socioecological
Research”, in Ecology and Society, 11, 2006, http://www.ecologyandsociety.
org/vol11/iss2/art13/-. J.G. Liu, T. Dietz, S.R. Carpenter, C. Folke, M. Alberti,
C.L. Redman, S.H. Schneider, E. Ostrom, A.N. Pell, J. Lubchenco, W.W. Taylor,
Z.Y. Ouyang, P. Deadman, T. Kratz, and W. Provencher, “Coupled Human and
Natural Systems”, in Ambio, 36, 2007.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 14
vironment, using a social metabolism approach to investigate the
structure and functioning of agricultural production systems. The
concept of social metabolism appears widely in sustainability sci-
ence.10
Recognizing that all economic activity is based on a throughput
of materials and energy, it links socioeconomic activity to ecosystem
analysis. The corresponding set of methods – material and
energy flow analysis, or MEFA – allows one to trace material and energy
flows through socioeconomic systems and provides a quantitative
picture of the physical exchange processes between societies and
their environment. This approach has also been applied in historical
studies and in particular to explore society-nature interactions in
local rural systems and to investigate the relationship between land,
humans, livestock, and the flows of materials and energy related to
production and reproduction in agricultural systems.11
Old World and New World farm systems
How did the farm system that immigrants left behind compare with
that which they found (and created) on the Great Plains frontier? This
study uses a socio-ecological approach to explore similarities and differences
in land use at either end of the migration chain.12
It employs
10
R.U. Ayres and U.E. Simonis, Industrial Metabolism: Restructuring for
Sustainable Development, United Nations University Press, New York 1994. M.
Fischer-Kowalski, “Society’s Metabolism. The Intellectual History of Material
Flow Analysis, Part I: 1860-1970”, in Journal of Industrial Ecology, 2, 1998.
11
R.P. Sieferle, F. Krausmann, H. Schandl, and V. Winiwarter, Das Ende der
Fläche. Zum Sozialen Metabolismus der Industrialisierung, Böhlau, Köln 2006. Krausmann,
Milk, Manure cit.. X. Cusso, R. Garrabou, and E. Tello, “Social Metabolism
in an Agrarian Region of Catalonia (Spain) in 1860 to 1870: Flows, Energy Balance
and Land Use”, in Ecological Economics, 58, 2006. G.I. Guzman Casado and
M. Gonzalez de Molina, “Preindustrial Agriculture versus Organic Agriculture: The
Land Cost of Sustainability”, in Land Use Policy, 26, 2009. G. Cunfer, “Manure
Matters on the Great Plains Frontier”, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 34,
2004. J. Marull, J. Pino, and E. Tello, “The Loss of Landscape Efficiency: An Ecological
Analysis of Land Use Changes in Western Mediterranean Agriculture (Vallès
County, Catalonia, 1853-2004)”, in Global Environment, 2, 2008.
15
two community case studies, one in Austria and the other in Kansas, to
compare the ways that people turned the raw materials of soil, climate,
and biota into the finished products of food, field, and culture.
Theyern, Austria, as it existed around 1830, serves as the first case
study. Theyern is about 100 km northwest of Gols. A considerable preexisting
dataset makes it possible to model Theyern’s land use history in
great detail, and the agricultural system there matches, in broad outline,
that of the Gols-Ragendorf-Kaltenstein region that fed Finley Township’s
nineteenth century population boom. Theyern was a typical lowland
farming system with an area of 2.3 km² and a population of 102
in 1829.13
The village lies in the low, rolling countryside of northeastern
Austria. Here a loess soil over conglomerate rock with a high lime content
provides good conditions for cultivation. With an average annual
temperature of 10° C and 521 mm of precipitation, Theyern has favorable
climatic conditions for cropland farming and cereal production.
The village has been cultivated for many centuries; it is possible to trace
individual farmsteads to the early 15th
century.14
By the early nineteenth
century more than half of Theyern’s area was cropland (Fig. 2a). Despite
a rather large livestock herd, only 3% of the village was grassland, but
woodland commons provided additional grazing. Woodlands covered
roughly one third of the territory, but only prevailed on soils unsuitable
for cultivation. They served not only as a source for fuel and timber but
were also grazed and provided litter for animal bedding.15
Theyern, like
Gols, was on the edge of a wine-growing region and, although there
12
M. Fischer-Kowalski and H. Haberl (eds), Socioecological Transitions and
Global Change: Trajectories of Social Metabolism and Land Use, Edward Elgar
Publishing, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, UK 2007. For an early discussion of
agroecology as a central subject for environmental history, see D. Worster, “Transformations
of the Earth: Toward an Agroecological Perspective in History”, in
Journal of American History, 76, 4, 1990.
13
More detailed information on population, livestock and land use in Theyern
is provided in Supporting Table S5.
14
C. Sonnlechner, “Umweltgeschichte und Siedlungsgesc. Methodische Anmerkungen
zu Hans Krawariks ‘Frühe Siedlungsprozesse im Waldviertel’”, in Das
Waldviertel, 50, 2001.
15
Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 16
are no vineyards in Theyern itself, farmers had access to vineyards in
neighboring villages. Population density was high: at 45 persons per
km² it was somewhat above the Austrian average of 42 persons per km².
In 1829 Theyern was home to 17 farm families who cultivated an average
of 8 ha each.16
However, 3 of the farms were larger (approximately
13-19 ha), while 4 had very small holdings of under 4 ha, probably
producing barely enough for subsistence.17
Until the mid 19th century, land did not belong to the peasants
but to the local manor, which assigned it to particular families. In
the case of Theyern, the nearby Benedictine monastery of Göttweig
served this function, and also collected tithes and taxes (in the form
of money, compulsory human and animal labor, or a share of agricultural
produce). Besides the peasant families and the manor, the
village community itself was an important institution of land-use
decision-making. The village managed its woodlands collectively
as commons. Also, the village as a whole determined the temporal
rhythm of cropland cultivation and crop choice. Each family tended
numerous small plots of land scattered across the municipality. A
three-field rotation system necessitated joint decisions and efforts
regarding plowing and harvesting of crops (Fig. 2b).18
The main source for the reconstruction of Theyern’s land use and
farming systems is the Franciscean Cadastre (Franziszeischer or Stabiler
Kataster).19
This tax survey was conducted during the first half
of the 19th century (1817-1856) and covered most of the territory
16
Cadstral Schätzungs Elaborat der Steuergemeinde Theyern, held at Landesarchiv
St. Pölten.
17
The small size and low output of some of the farms is assumed to be one
of the main reasons for the comparatively frequent turnover in farm holders observed
in Theyern between 1500 and 1800 (see Projektgruppe Umweltgeschichte,
Historische und ökologische Prozesse in einer Kulturlandschaft, Wien 1997).
18
Cadastral Schätzungs Elaborat der Steuergemeinde Theyern.
19
A. Moritsch, “Der Franziszeische Grundsteuerkataster. Quelle für die Wirtschaftsgeschichte
und historische Volkskunde”, in East European Quarterly, 3,
1972. R. Sandgruber, “Der Franziszeische Kataster und die dazugehörigen Steuerschätzungsoperate
als wirtschafts- und sozialhistorische Quellen”, in Mitteilungen
aus dem niederösterreichischen Landesarchiv, 3, 1979.
17
figure 2. Theyern land management
cropland surrounded the village. On the outskirts of the community, woodlands prevailed on poor soils not suitable for
cropping. (2b) The cropland portion of the agroecosystem rotated annually through a three-field sequence. Family farms
consisted of scattered plots distributed across all parts of the village, as illustrated here for the Gill family, one of the three
larger holdings (ca. 13 ha of farmland).
300 0 300 600 Meters
N
Field C (Bodenfeld/Taubenfeld)
Field A (Hochgeit/Kleinfeld/Ortsried)
Field B (Fahrenfeld/Mittelfeld)
Three field rotation system, Theyern 1829
Woodland
Dispersed fields of Gill Farm
300 0 300 600 Meters
N
Woodlands
Pasture, meadows and fruit gardens
Cropland
Land use, Theyern 1829
All other land
Figure 2. Theyern land management. (2a) Small meadows and orchards clustered closely around residential house lots, wh
cropland surrounded the village. On the outskirts of the community, woodlands prevailed on poor soils not suitable for
cropping. (2b) The cropland portion of the agroecosystem rotated annually through a three-field sequence. Family farms
consisted of scattered plots distributed across all parts of the village, as illustrated here for the Gill family, one of the three
larger holdings (ca. 13 ha of farmland).
300 0 300 600 Meters
N
Field C (Bodenfeld/Taubenfeld)
Field A (Hochgeit/Kleinfeld/Ortsried)
Field B (Fahrenfeld/Mittelfeld)
Three field rotation system, Theyern 1829
Woodland
Dispersed fields of Gill Farm
300 0 300 600 Meters
N
Woodlands
Pasture, meadows and fruit gardens
Cropland
Land use, Theyern 1829
All other land
(2a) Small meadows and orchards clustered closely around residential
house lots, while cropland surrounded the village. On the outskirts of the
community, woodlands prevailed on poor soils not suitable for cropping.
(2b) The cropland portion of the agroecosystem rotated annually through a
three-field sequence. family farms consisted of scattered plots distributed
across all parts of the village, as illustrated here for the Gill family, one of
the three larger holdings (ca. 13 ha of farmland)
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 18
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, some 300,000 km². It includes
a geodetic land survey, estimations of crop yields for all land use
classes, and a report of monetary outputs.20
The Franciscean Cadastre
comprises several different types of documents:
- A 1:2,880 scale cadastral map of each Cadastral Municipality
(Katastral Gemeinde) with information on land use and cover for
individual parcels. Up to 39 different land use classes plus up to 4
distinct quality designators appear on the maps.
- Survey Protocols (Parzellen Protokoll) indicating ownership
plus size and land use type for each parcel or building.
- Cadastral Summaries (Catastral Schätzungs Elaborat), the
main data source for the reconstruction of land use practice and
biomass and nutrient flows. These are handwritten texts, one for
each map, offering extensive descriptions of topography, demography,
and the farming system. They contain detailed information
on land use and land cover, yields, population, livestock, and farming
practices, as well as production, livestock feeding practices, soil
manuring standards, general information on the number of farms,
community wealth, use of animals, and markets.
- Estimates of Expenses and Monetary Yield (Darstellung des
Kulturaufwandes und des Reinertrages), giving aggregate information
on factor costs and estimated monetary gross and net yields
based on local prices in 1824, for each land-use category in a cadastral
unit. In combination with the Survey Protocol, this document
was the basis for tax calculation.
In addition to the data provided by the cadastre, we used a wide
variety of sources and literature about local, regional, and general
aspects of the structure and functioning of pre-industrial farming
systems.21
Furthermore, published and unpublished data and analyses
relating to the environmental history of the case study regions
20
K. Lego, “Geschichte des österreichischen Grundkatasters”, Bundesamt für
Eich - und Vermessungswesen, Wien, 1968. K.K. Finanz-Ministerium (ed.), Tafeln
zur Statistik des Steuerwesens im österreichischen Kaiserstaate mit besonderer
Berücksichtigung der directen Steuern und des Grundsteuerkatasters, Wien, 1858.
21
See Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit. Id., “Land Use and Socio-economic Me-
19
were available from previous research projects.22
The Cadastral survey for Theyern dates to 1829. Rather than reflecting
specific conditions during any single year, it reports longterm
averages. A reconstruction of the agroecosystem on the basis of
these data represents a valid average for much of the first half of the
19th
century. Only later in the 19th
century did the farming system
begin to change slowly as innovations associated with the first agricultural
revolution and the land reform of 1848 spread in Austria.23
At the other end of the migration lay Decatur County, Kansas.
George and Elizabeth ended their separate travels in the grasslands
of the Great Plains, a flat to gently undulating steppe environment
slowly rising in elevation from east to west. Recently buffalo range
controlled by Cheyenne, Pawnee, and Arapaho horse cultures, Decatur
County sat at the transition zone between dry mixed-grass
prairie and very dry short-grass plains (Fig. 1). Rainfall averaged
475 mm, and the dominant native vegetation was little bluestem,
grama, and buffalo grasses. Trees were very rare – less than 5 percent
of ground cover – and appeared only in narrow bands along rivers
and streams. Here soils were quite rich, but rainfall was unreliable,
reeling between very wet years with 800 mm or more and severe
tabolism in Pre-industrial Agricultural Systems: Four Nineteenth-century Villages
in Comparison”, in Social Ecology working paper n. 72, Institute of Social Ecology,
Vienna 2008 for a detailed description.
22
This material includes digitised versions of the original cadastral maps of
the villages, specific evaluations of parcel protocols (e.g., the quantification of the
extent of external land use, land use data, and factor costs at the farm level). See
Projektgruppe Umweltgeschichte, Historische und ökologische Prozesse cit. Projektgruppe
Umweltgeschichte, Kulturlandschaftsforschung: Historische Entwicklung von
Wechselwirkungen zwischen Gesellschaft und Natur, CD-ROM, Bundesministerium
für Wissenschaft und Verkehr, Wien 1999. V. Winiwarter and C. Sonnlechner,
Der soziale Metabolismus der vorindustriellen Landwirtschaft in Europa, Breuninger
Stiftung, Stuttgart 2001.
23
R. Sandgruber, “Die Agrarrevolution in Österreich. Ertragssteigerung und
Kommerzialisierung der landwirtschaftlichen Produktion im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert”,
in Österreich-Ungarn als Agrarstaat. Wirtschaftliches Wachstum und
Agrarverhältnisse in Österreich im 19. Jahrhundert, A. Hoffmann (ed.), Verlag für
Geschichte und Politik, Wien, 1978.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 20
droughts when less than 250 mm fell. To the Thirs and their neighbors
the land promised a prosperous future.24
The reconstruction of Decatur County’s agro-ecosystem comes
mainly from agricultural census data compiled periodically by the
State of Kansas and by the U.S. federal government. Census descriptions
for individual farms in this part of Kansas are available for
1885, 1895, 1905, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935, and 1940. These
9 snapshots describe land use activity over a period of 55 years, from
the beginning of frontier farm-making through the establishment
of a fully developed, modern agricultural system. Censuses report
the acreage and yields of various crops on each farm, the number
of livestock, the amount of irrigation, fencing, and agricultural implements
owned, and many other things. With these data we can
follow the progress of the Thir homestead from raw prairie to integrated
farm. Identical data exist for the same years for every farm in
Finley Township, allowing a comparison between the Thir farm and
the several dozen that surrounded it. Aggregated county level data
are more readily available, existing for each year between 1880 and
1940. Thus it is possible to study the land use history of the region
at nested scales, from the individual farm to the rural neighborhood
of the township, to the entire 230,000-hectare county, and, indeed,
for all 105 counties in the state of Kansas.
But land, crops, and livestock are not all that make up a farm.
Population censuses reveal the social side of farm systems. Manu-
24
Climate data come from two sources. The first is T.R. Karl, C.N. Williams,
Jr., F. T. Quinlan, and T. A. Boden, United States Historical Climatology Network
(HCN) Serial Temperature and Precipitation Data, Environmental Science Division,
Publication n. 3404, Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, Oak
Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee (the historical climatology data
are stored as point data for weather stations at monthly intervals for 1221 stations
in the United States). The second source is National Climatic Data Center,
Arizona State University, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Global Historical
Climatology Network (GHCN) (this data set includes comprehensive monthly
global surface baseline climate data). The Great Plains Population and Environment
Project (www.icpsr.umich.edu/plains) interpolated data from 394 weather
stations in the Great Plains to counties for each month between 1895 and 1993.
21
script population schedules are available for 1885, 1895, 1900,
1905, 1910, 1915, 1920, 1925, and 1930. These data reveal the life
cycles of families, as couples married and had children, as children
grew up and left home, as people aged and died. Again, we can
observe these changes at various scales, from individual people and
families to aggregated townships and counties. Together, the population
and agricultural censuses provide basic data about the social
metabolism of Kansas farmsteads.25
A socio-ecological approach
to agricultural systems
Figure 3 presents a simple conceptual model of agriculture as
a coupled socioeconomic and natural system. It builds on basic
assumptions about the relation of population, land use, and agricultural
production formulated by Ester Boserup, but extends this
perspective by explicitly including flows of material and energy.26
It is specific about the interactions of socio-economic systems and
ecosystems, allowing one to capture important technological developments
related to the industrialization of agriculture. In its most
general form, the model defines the main biophysical relations in
terms of flows of energy and materials between (and within) a natural
system (i.e. the agro-ecosystem, characterized by biogeographic
conditions and land use types) and a socio-economic system, consisting
of two subsystems, namely the population subsystem (characterized
by demographic attributes) and the economic production
subsystem (including all infrastructure, farming technology and
25
K.M. Sylvester, S. Hautaniemi Leonard, M.P. Gutmann, and G. Cunfer,
“Demography and Environment in Grassland Settlement: Using Linked Longitudinal
and Cross-Sectional Data to Explore Household and Agricultural Systems”,
in History and Computing, 14, 2006.
26
E. Boserup, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth: The Economics of Agrarian
Change Under Population Pressure, Aldine/Earthscan, Chicago 1965. E. Boserup,
Population and Technological Change - A Study of Long-Term Trends, University of
Chicago Press, Chicago 1981.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 22
livestock).27
The model describes an agricultural production system
(here a farm or a village) as an agro-ecosystem managed by a local
population investing labor and energy, applying a certain mix of
technology, and generating a certain return of agricultural produce.
It maintains exchange processes with other demographic, socioeconomic,
and ecological systems. On a more detailed level, the model
specifies the relation of land use and land cover with the extraction
of biomass, different types of conversion and consumption processes
within the local production system, and land use practices and the
flows into and out of the local system. Such a systemic perspective
allows one to analyze all biomass and energy flows and their interrelations
within the agricultural production system, and to link them
27
This version of the model focuses on biophysical relations between society
and nature and thus reduces the socio-economic system to its physical components,
i.e., the population and the production subsystem. See M. Fischer-Kowalski
and H. Weisz, “Society as Hybrid Between Material and Symbolic Realms:
Toward a Theoretical Framework of Society-Nature Interaction”, in Advances in
Human Ecology, 8, 1999.
Figure 3. Conceptual model of material and energy flows
in local agricultural production systems. See text for explanationFigure
3. Conceptual model of material and energy flows in local agricultural production systems. See text for explanation.
Agro-ecosystem
Woodland
Grassland
Cropland
Local agricultural production system
Production
Livestock
Farmsteads and
infrastructure
Machines and
tools
Population
Human
population
Age structure
Fertility
Mortality
…
Work and migrationImport/ExportMaterial and energy
WorkWork
Draft
power
FoodBiomass
Manure
Physical compartment of society
23
to land use, ecosystem processes and the demographic system.
Historical sources such as the Austrian cadastral records or the Kansas
agricultural and population censuses provide a basic set of quantitative
and qualitative data that can be used to quantify the flows of
nutrients, materials, and energy into, within, and out of the various
subsystems described in this model. This systemic perspective allows
one to cross-check the validity of historical data and to fill gaps in the
data consistently when omissions or flaws occur in the original sources.
For example, even though only fragmentary quantitative data on
feed supply and livestock may be available from the cadastral record,
knowledge about the reproductive patterns of livestock as well as species-
and production-specific feed demand make it possible to generate
a picture of feed demand in relation to available supply.28
Following the model presented in Figure 3, this study identifies
nine key socioecological indicators that describe the physical stocks
and flows of the two agricultural production systems. Those indicators
fit into three categories: people and space, farm productivity
and livestock, and nutrient management. This text includes graphic
figures to represent the most important indicators; the complete
data behind those figures are available in the Appendix as Supporting
Tables S1-S6.
People and Space
population density: census population divided by land area (people/km2
)
average farm size: agricultural area29
divided by number of farms (ha/farm)
land availability: agricultural area divided by number of farm laborers reported
in the Kansas census or estimated based on Theyern’s age structure (ha/person)
28
See for example H. Schüle, Raum-zeitliche Modelle - ein neuer methodischer
Ansatz in der Agrargeschichte: Das Beispiel der bernischen Viehwirtschaft als Träger
und Indikator der Agrarmodernisierung 1790 – 1915, Lizensiatsarbeit, Historisches
Institut der Universität Bern, Bern 1989.
29
Throughout the paper we define “agricultural area” as not only cultivated and
intensively used land such as cropland, meadows or fruit gardens, but also uncultivated
prairie in farms (Kansas) and woodlands (Theyern). Uncultivated prairie and
woodlands have to be considered integral components of the agricultural production
systems in Theyern and Kansas as they are used to graze animals or to extract
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 24
Farm Productivity
grain yield: cereal production (including grain returned as seed) divided by
total area planted, excluding fallow (kg/ha)
area productivity: plant and animal produce for human nutrition, including
edible produce for export, converted into food energy and divided by agricultural
area (GJ/ha)30
labor productivity: plant and animal produce for human nutrition, including
edible produce for export, converted into food energy and divided by number
of farm laborers reported in the Kansas census or estimated based on Theyern’s
age structure (GJ/person)31
marketable crop production: cereal production minus on-farm use of cereals
(on-farm use includes the use of cereals as feed, seed, and for meeting subsistence
needs (percentage of extracted biomass as tons of dry matter)
Livestock and Nutrient Management
livestock density: large animal units of 500 kg live weight divided by agricultural
area (animals/km²)32
nitrogen return: N inputs from natural deposition, free fixation, manure, and
leguminous crops divided by N contained in harvested biomass (percentage of
extracted N returned to soil )33
bedding materials and served as sources for biomass and plant nutrients for more intensively
used fields (Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit. Cunfer, Manure Matters cit.).
30
One Giga Joule (GJ) corresponds to 109
Joule or 239 Mega calories (Mcal).
Food output is measured in Joules of nutritional value (according to standard
nutrition tables).
31
We use “area productivity” and “labor productivity” in conformity with
their usage in socio-ecological literature. Readers should be aware that economists
have different definitions for these terms.
32
We converted livestock numbers into large animal units at 500 kg live weight
by using species and region-specific data on average live weight in the observed
period (Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit. Id., Land Use cit., p.56).
33
This estimate of nitrogen return to soils is only approximate. This analysis
does not include a full soil nutrient balance. For one thing, it does not consider
N losses due to volatilization and leaching. Furthermore, a comprehensive assessment
of soil fertility would need to include phosphorus, potassium, and organic
matter, plus the structural properties of soils. Given the limitations of historical
data, this paper focuses on those N inputs and extractions that farmers control
most directly. For further details concerning the procedure used to estimate nitrogen
flows see id., Milk, Manure cit.; id., Land Use cit., pp. 17-20. Cunfer,
Manure Matters cit. On soil nutrient balances more in general, see R.S. Loomis,
“Ecological Dimensions of Medieval Agrarian Systems: An Ecologist Responds”,
in Agricultural History, 52, 4, 1978. Id., “Traditional Agriculture in America,” in
25
People and Space
The village of Theyern in Austria had a typically European agro-ecological
system. Population expansion during the late Middle Ages led
to a gradual colonization of new land for agriculture. By 1830 Theyern
had existed as a discrete community for several hundred years and its
cropland, hay meadows, grazing commons, and surrounding forests
had been producing food, feed, and shelter, year in and year out, for
a very long time. Most members of the community lived little above
subsistence level, producing as much food and supporting as many
people as possible, given current cultivation practices, technology, and
energy regimes. The fully populated land eventually achieved its peak
productive potential. Theyern’s population density in 1830 was 45
people per square kilometer. The average family farmed 13 hectares of
land, and there were 2 hectare of agricultural land per person in the
community (1 ha/cap if woodland is excluded). Over centuries, the
people of Theyern had learned how to use their land intensively, supporting
the highest number of people possible, and sustaining those
populations for multiple generations.
The situation in Decatur County, Kansas, when Elizabeth Demmer,
George Thir, and their compatriots arrived, was just the opposite.
Here was land that had never known widespread agricultural
use. For 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age the Great
Plains had been steppe grassland, home to wild grazers – bison – and
browsers – pronghorn – but few other large animals. The indigenous
people were mobile hunters and gatherers, traveling on foot over
wide distances. Native agriculture expanded on the plains only after
Annual Review of Ecological Systems, 15, 1984. B.M.S. Campbell and M. Overton
(eds), Land, Labour, and Livestock: Historical Studies in European Agricultural Productivity,
Manchester University Press, Manchester, NY, 1991. R.S. Loomis and
D.J. Conner, Crop Ecology: Productivity and Management in Agricultural Systems,
Cambridge University Press, New York, 1992. R. Shiel, “An Introduction to Soil
Nutrient Flows”, in Soils and Societies: Perspectives from Environmental History,
J.R. McNeill and V. Winiwarter (eds), White Horse Press, Isle of Harris, UK
2006. R. Shiel, “Nutrient Flows in Pre-Modern Agriculture in Europe,” in McNeill
and Winiwarter (eds), Soils and Societies cit.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 26
1000 A.D. Occasional patches of maize, beans, and squash dotted
the narrow river valleys winding through vast upland grasslands.34
At
their greatest extent, Indian crop fields never reached even 1 percent
of the area of the Great Plains. After the 17th
century, many natives
adopted horse-based hunting and gathering, and some moved in the
direction of horse pastoralism.
34
Farming Indians maintained soil fertility by swidden, moving their villages
wholesale every 5-10 years when soil nutrients failed and crop yields declined. The
most notable difference between New World and Old World agriculture was the
presence of domesticated animals in the latter. Livestock—oxen, milk cows, hogs
and pigs, poultry, and dozens of other domesticated animals—were ubiquitous on
Figure 4. People and Space, Theyern, 1829; Finley Township
and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (4a) population density;
(4b) average farm size; (4c) land availabilityFigure 4. People and Space, Theyern, 1829; Finley Township and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (4a) population density; (4b)
average farm size; (4c) land availability.
4a
0
10
20
30
40
50
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
populationdensity[cap/km²]
Finley Tow nship
Thir farm
Theyern community
4b
0
70
140
210
280
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
farmsize[ha/farm]
4c
0
25
50
75
100
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
[hafarmland/cap]
Sources: see text
27
Thus European farmers who moved into the region in the late
nineteenth century entered an agricultural vacuum. Importing their
livestock with them, and thus increasing their ability to work the soil
100-fold, American, German, and Austro-Hungarian settlers began
the enormous task of agricultural colonization, plowing sod that had
lain intact for thousands of years. The contrast with European agricultural
villages could not have been greater. The population density in
Finley Township, where George and Elizabeth Thir made their new
farm, was only 2 people per square kilometer in 1895, about one order
of magnitude lower than in Theyern. The average farm size was an incredible
92 hectares, so large that for the first several decades few farmers
could practically make use of all of their land and a considerable
fraction of the available land was used for extensive grazing. There were
17 hectares of land in the township for every man, woman, and child.
The amount of land available to be worked per agricultural laborer was
huge and increased from 36 ha in 1895 to almost 70 ha in 1925, when
the first tractors appeared in the township. Given the shortage of labor
on this agricultural frontier, much of the land remained unused. On
the Thir homestead, 65 hectares supported and employed two adults
and three children. Compared to the community as a whole, the Thir
farm was nearly representative, with a population density of 6 people
per square kilometer and about 16 hectares of land per person.
The pioneer era in Decatur County lasted about 50 years, from
1870 to 1920. During that time farmers filled the land, adjusted
their farming practices to fit local soils, climate, and topography, and
slowly moved toward an agricultural equilibrium. Population density
in Finley Township increased during the initial period of homesteading
then stabilized at between 4 and 5 people per square kilometer.
During the same period average farm sizes rose rapidly, from 92
European farms and crucial to their function and success. Indian farmers had no
domesticated animals. Women tilled the soil entirely through human labor. Thus
Indian agriculturalists never farmed the widespread uplands of the Great Plains. Both
population densities and the area of arable land remained very low. See R.D. Hurt,
Indian Agriculture in America: Prehistory to the Present, University Press of Kansas,
Lawrence 1987, pp. 57-64; W.R. Wedel, “The Prehistoric Plains,” in Ancient Native
Americans, J.D. Jennings (ed.), W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco 1978.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 28
hectares in 1895 to a peak at 154 hectares in 1920, then dropped
slightly to settle at around 130 hectares for the next few decades.
Land per person followed a similar curve, rising from 17 hectares in
1895 to 35 in 1920, and thereafter floating between about 30 and
40 through the early 20th
century. On the Thir farm, rapid acquisition
of additional land pushed these numbers higher for the family.
In 1915, 30 years after immigration from Austria, the Thirs owned
259 hectares of land, a whopping 65 hectares for each person in the
family. While farmers on the Kansas frontier went through a period
of adaptation and adjustment, they did not move toward an Old
World style farm system of high population densities on intensely
used land. If anything, they moved away from that model.
Farm productivity
Theyern farmers maximized their grain yields, but within the
bounds of long-term sustainability. They grew as much food as possible
without undermining the ability of the land to support people
for indefinite generations into the future. In 1830 Theyern farms produced
819 kg of grain per hectare, which, together with animal products,
were enough to provide 9 GJ of nutritional energy for every farm
laborer. Area productivity was about 2.9 GJ of food per hectare. The
highly integrated subsistence system supported a lot of people, but
surplus above local demand was comparatively low and, particularly
for the smaller farms, production accomplished bare survival only.
Here farmers had been re-using soils over centuries for agricultural
production. The population density matched agricultural production,
given local climate and available technology. The largest share of farm
output went toward local consumption. The community exported little
of its farm produce; our data suggest that Theyern exported from
the local system no more 25% of its agricultural produce through sales
in nearby markets or rent paid to the landlord. While the Franciscean
Cadastre dates to 1829 in Theyern, the land use information it provides
does not represent only one year, but rather a long-term average
for the community that fairly represents the village’s typical productivity
throughout the first half of the 19th century.
29
In western Kansas, the freshly plowed grassland soils produced
much higher grain yields in the first couple of decades. Taking advantage
of 10,000 years of stockpiled soil nutrients, the Thir farm
produced 1274 kg of grain per hectare in 1895, 56% higher than
Theyern’s yield, while Finley Township as a whole averaged 1141 kg, a
39% surplus over the Austrian case. The township’s area productivity
in 1895 was significantly higher than in Theyern, at 4.6 GJ per hectare,
and because there were many fewer people on the land in Kansas,
nutritional energy production per farm laborer was 168 GJ in Finley
Township. Such return on labor – nearly 20 times Theyern’s rate – was
figure 5. farm Productivity, Theyern 1829; finley Township
and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (5a) grain yield; (5b)
area productivity; (5c) labor productivity; (5d) marketable
crop productionFigure 5. Farm Productivity, Theyern 1829; Finley Township and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (5a) grain yield; (5b) area
productivity; (5c) labor productivity; (5d) marketable crop production.
5a
0
600
1200
1800
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
grainyield[kg/ha]
Finley Tow nship
Thir farm
Theyern community
5b
0
2
4
6
8
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
Foodoutputperunitoffarmland[GJfood/ha]
5c
0
100
200
300
400
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
Foodoutputperagriculturallaborer[GJfood/cap]
5d
0
25
50
75
100
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
[%ofbiomassextracted(tonsdrymatter)]
Sources: see text
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 30
stupendous. Whereas one Theyern farm laborer grew enough food to
feed about 2.5 people, one agricultural laborer in Finley Township
could feed nearly 50. No person could reasonably consume so much
food. Rather, the excess production beyond subsistence needs went
into market exports. Agriculture in the Great Plains was from the very
beginning oriented towards commercial production and was heavily
reliant on the expanding railroad network to transport grain to urban
markets. Three quarters of the grain grown in Finley Township was in
excess of local food and feed needs, and instead found national and
international markets. At harvest farmers bagged their wheat, hauled
it to nearby grain elevators on the railroad line, and shipped their
produce east. American cities grew rapidly in the late nineteenth century
as other immigrants poured in to take factory jobs in the United
States’ rapidly industrializing economy. Kansas wheat farmers fed not
only themselves but those distant urban workers too.
The rapid exploitation of stockpiled soil nutrients could not continue
indefinitely. Through the early twentieth century, cereal yields
in western Kansas fell, plummeting to less than 1/4 their peak levels.
As recently arrived farmers plowed up fresh Finley Township land in
the first two decades of agricultural settlement, yields remained high,
rising from 1141 kg per hectare in 1895 to 1687 ten years later. Then,
once most of the new land was already in production, yields began to
fall, down to 1244 kg in 1915 and 736 in 1925. By the 1920s, in the
fourth decade of agricultural settlement, grain yields dropped to levels
similar to those Theyern farmers had produced a century earlier. Still,
yields continued to fall, to below 400 kg in the late 1930s. The Thir
farm closely followed community-wide trends in its first 40 years.
The decline in crop yields was unmistakably downward over half
a century, but from year to year there were sharp ups and downs. For
example, 1925 saw township-wide yields of only 736 kg per hectare,
but 1930 produced a bumper crop at 1278 kg. Five years later, in
1935, production was down sharply again. Area productivity likewise
varied widely, fluctuating between 4 and 7 GJ per hectare, then
dropping to less than 2 in 1925 and again in the 1930s. Crop yields
in Kansas were determined not only by soil fertility, but also by soil
moisture. The extreme annual variation in rainfall at the center of
31
the continent hovered just above or just below the minimum precipitation
necessary to sustain wheat, corn, and other cereals. Unlike in
Theyern, rainfall controlled yields as much as soil quality did. Thus,
the extremely low yields in 1935 and 1940 resulted more from the
deep drought of those years than from depleted soils.
The marketable production in excess of subsistence needs moved
downward along with yields, from 74% in 1895 to just 26% in
1925. It bounced back with strong rainfall in 1930, to 72%, but
then fell with the arrival of drought in the 1930s. By 1935, cereal
production had actually fallen 14% below what was needed for bare
subsistence, but was up above 40% just five years later.
Rainfall did not decline steadily between 1870 and 1940, but
rather moved up and down around the average. The steep downward
trend in yields over the long term reveals massive soil mining in western
Kansas during the pioneer era. Newly arrived farmers produced
stupendous food excesses and sold those crops into the cash market.
In the process they rapidly exploited the stockpiled soil fertility that
had accumulated century by century under native grass sod.
Livestock and nutrient management
In addition to high human population density, Old World farm
systems had high densities of livestock. The menagerie of European
agriculture included oxen, beef cattle, milk cows, draft horses,
mules, donkeys, hogs and pigs, goats, and an array of birds, including
chickens, ducks, and geese. Theyern, for example, had 24 large
animals (500 kg equivalent) per km² around 1830. The importance
of livestock cannot be overstated. Most obviously, farm animals provided
food (beef, pork, poultry, milk, eggs, lard, butter) and clothing
(leather, wool). Also of crucial importance, they provided labor for
plowing soil, cultivating weeds, harvesting crops, and transporting
farm produce over short and long distances.35
A more subtle contri-
35
The most common draft animals used in Theyern around 1830 were oxen.
Only the larger farms kept horses, while in small holdings cows were also used
for labor (working fields and fallow areas) and transport (moving harvest from
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 32
bution, but no less significant, came from the manure produced by
livestock. Rich in nitrogen, organic carbon, and other soil nutrients,
livestock manure was a vector by which people could redirect nutrients
from biomass that humans cannot digest (grass, brush, stubble,
litter) to agricultural crops. Manure also functioned as a means to
move fertility from place to place across the landscape. For example,
cattle grazing grass or brush growing on steep hillsides, in forests,
or over non-arable soils, accumulated nutrients that they brought
back to the farm yard and deposited on the ground. When farmers
applied that manure onto their crop fields they were essentially
transporting soil nutrients from untillable land to arable land, subsidizing
fertility in the infields with nutrients transported by livestock
from the outfields. Theyern farmers maintained significantly more
livestock than they needed for food and labor; they kept additional
animals, we surmise, for their manure production.36
Every year, Theyern farmers returned to the soil more than 90%
of the nitrogen they had extracted from it in crops. Much of that restored
nitrogen flowed through livestock and their manure. Collecting,
processing, and properly applying manure was labor-intensive
work. The whole system was intricately interrelated: Feeding a dense
population required maintaining animals that produced manure,
dispersed fields, fuel wood from the community forests, and manure back to the
fields). Krausmann estimates that installed power amounted to 0.17 kilo Watts
(kW) per ha of cropland (Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit.). According to Schaschl,
who has quantified the monthly supply of and demand for human and animal
labor during the course of a year per individual farms in Theyern, the supply of
animal labour exceeded demand even during peak seasons in March and April (E.
Schaschl, Rekonstruktion der Arbeitszeit in der Landwirtschaft im 19. Jahrhundert
am Beispiel von Theyern in Niederösterreich, Social Ecology working paper n. 96,
Wien 2007). In Finley Township, horses were the only animals used to provide
work until the first tractors appeared in the 1920s. According to our estimate,
installed power per unit of cropland was about the same as in Theyern (see Supporting
Table S3 and S6).
36
R.C. Allen, “The Nitrogen Hypothesis and the English Agricultural Revolution.
A Biological Analysis”, in Journal of Economic History, 68, 2008. M.J. Frissel
(ed.), Cycling of Mineral Nutrients in Agricultural Ecosystems, Elsevier, Amsterdam
1978. Cusso et al., Social Metabolism cit.
33
which in their turn required significant labor input and hence a
dense population. Domesticated animals enabled the soil restoration
necessary for continuous cropping into the indefinite future. The
presence of these animals distinguished Old World farming from
that of Native Americans. In the Americas, natives had no livestock,
and managed soil fertility by moving to new farm fields every 5 to
20 years as soil fertility declined.
Another mechanism for the maintenance of soil nitrogen in the
European system was fallow rotation. In 1829, cropland in Theyern
was still cultivated in the traditional three-field rotation. A crop of
winter cereal in the first year and one of summer cereal in the second
year was followed by a year of fallow. During the fallow period,
the land was manured and vegetation regrowth was plowed into the
soil. Mineralized nutrients from organic matter accumulated for the
benefit of crops in subsequent years. Natural ecosystem processes
also provided additions of soil nitrogen, including free fixation by
soil microorganisms and nitrogen deposited from the atmosphere in
rain, snow, or dust. At the turn of the 19th
century, Austrian farmers
were only beginning to include nitrogen-fixing legume fodder crops
such as clover or alfalfa into their crop rotations, but in the coming
decades legumes gradually replaced fallow in the crop rotation
system, emerging as a crucial element in the management of soil
fertility. In Theyern in 1829, roughly one fifth of the fallow field was
planted with clover, already providing a considerable contribution
to soil nitrogen stocks. Thus, by a combination of means Theyern
farmers were essentially in balance, replacing about as much soil nitrogen
as they extracted each year.
Finley Township, for its part, was decidedly out of balance with
the nitrogen system. The initial plow-up accelerated the decomposition
of accumulated organic matter and spiked nitrogen into the
soil for the first several years.37
But ongoing plowing and cultivation
soon generated nitrogen declines through both chemical and
37
W.J. Parton, M.P. Gutmann, S.A. Williams, M. Easter, and D. Ojima, “Ecological
Impact of Historical Land-Use Patterns in the Great Plains: A Methodological
Assessment”, in Ecological Applications, 15, 2005.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 34
biological processes.38
Exposure of soils to the atmosphere initiated
ammonia volatilization by which stored nitrogen escaped into the
air. Tillage also encouraged bacterial denitrification, in which soil
bacteria converted nitrate to nitrogen gasses by means of digestion,
returning soil nitrogen to the atmosphere. Plowing could accelerate
leaching of nitrogen via rainwater deep into the soil, plus additional
losses from water and wind erosion.39
Thus it is not surprising that
crop yields began at remarkably high levels, then dropped throughout
the next fifty years after settlement.
In addition to these natural nitrogen losses, Kansas farmers extracted
more nitrogen from their soils than they returned each year,
largely because they put little manure back onto the fields. Finley
Township had a low livestock density of only 4 large animals per
38
H.J. Hass, C.E. Evans, and E.F. Miles, Nitrogen and Carbon Changes in
Great Plains Soils as Influenced by Cropping and Soil Treatments, U.S.D.A. Technical
Bulletin n. 1164, Government Printing Office, Washington 1957.
39
F.J. Stevenson (ed.), Nitrogen in Agricultural Soils, Agronomy Series n. 22,
American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of American, and Soil Science
Society of America, Madison, Wisconsin 1982. Cunfer, Manure Matters cit.. I.C.
Burke, W.K. Lauenroth, G. Cunfer, J.E. Barrett, A. Mosier, and P. Lowe, “Nitrogen
in the Central Grasslands Region of the United States”, in BioScience, 52, 2002.
Figure 6. Livestock and Nutrient Management, Theyern,
1829; Finley Township and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (6a)
livestock density; (6b) nitrogen return
Figure 6. Livestock and Nutrient Management, Theyern, 1829; Finley Township and Thir farm, 1895 to 1940: (6a) livestock
density; (6b) nitrogen return.
6a
0
10
20
30
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
livestockdensity[animalunits/km²]
Finley Tow nship
Thir farm
Theyern community
6b
0
25
50
75
100
1820
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
1950
nitrogenreturn[%ofextractedNreturnedtosoil]
Sources: see text
35
hectare in 1895, far below Theyern’s 24. That number rose to 23
animals per km² in 1905 (mostly beef cattle, horses, and milk cows),
and then dropped steadily over the next forty years, down to just 5
again by 1940. The relative shortage of livestock on Kansas farms
meant that farmers had correspondingly less manure with which to
return nitrogen to cropland soils. Farmers there returned only 27%
of the nitrogen they extracted in 1895, and the percentage remained
below 40% through the 1920s. The 1930s saw an increase in nitrogen
return to between 50 and 70 percent only because significant
crop failures during drought years prevented farmers from extracting
much nitrogen from their land.40
With natural soil fertility that
far exceeded subsistence needs and that produced large, exportable
surpluses for two decades, farmers did not feel the need to husband
large numbers of livestock for the purpose of manure accumulation.
They needed horses for labor, and used cattle and pigs for household
food and to add value to yet uncultivated prairie or pasture; but, beyond
that, they did not maintain additional animals simply for their
soil fertility benefits, as appears to have been the case in Theyern.
As George and Elizabeth Thir and their neighbors took more
nitrogen than they returned every year, crop yields fell. It took a
couple of generations before crisis loomed, and in the 1930s several
regional problems converged. Low and declining soil fertility began
to pressure farms just as a 9-year drought devastated the region and
a world-wide economic depression further challenged farm sustainability
in the Great Plains. The eventual solution came, not in adopting
Old World style farm management, but from the importation of
fossil fuel energy from outside the system. The decline in livestock
density in Finley Township after 1905 went hand-in-hand with the
advent of fossil fuel energy deployment on farms. When farmers
40
While the peaks in the rate of nitrogen return in Finley Township and at the
Thir farm in the 1930s are due to harvest failures and consequent low nitrogen
extraction rather than to increases in nitrogen input, leguminous crops contribute
to the high return rate (above 50%) which can be observed for the George Thir
farm in 1915. This was the only year when George Thir planted a considerable
fraction of his cropland with alfalfa.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 36
adopted tractors, trucks, and other internal combustion engines in
the early twentieth century they decreased their horse populations,
simultaneously decreasing their manure supply. After World War II
farmers addressed their soil fertility problem by increasing applications
of synthetic fertilizer in place of the missing manure. Nitrogen
fertilizer also represents a fossil fuel import, since its production
requires large amounts of natural gas. Thus, 20th
century farmers
substituted fossil-fuel driven tractors for the labor function of livestock,
and fossil-fuel derived fertilizers for the manure function of
livestock. In multiple ways, fossil fuels provided substitutes for the
missing livestock in the Kansas farm system.
Old World and New World yields:
a long-term comparison
By comparison to modern farm systems, the Old World agricultural
system may appear “sustainable”, but it was by no means stable,
permanent, or stagnant. Old World agriculture evolved steadily over
centuries, responding to both natural and cultural change. One way
to measure this change is through yields of cereal crops, the staple subsistence
food in nearly all temperate agricultural regions on earth.
Figure 7 puts this story in a broader context, presenting cereal
yields in the Old and New Worlds between 1830 and 1940.41
The
figure complements data for Kansas and Austria with cereal yields
for the United Kingdom (UK), where agricultural innovations that
increased European crop yields first emerged in the 19th
century.
At the beginning of the period under consideration here, Austrian
farmers devoted 1/3 of their arable land to unproductive fallow every
41
Yield data in Figure 7 were derived from Sieferle, Das Ende cit., p. 259. R.
Sandgruber, Österreichische Agrarstatistik 1750-1918, Verlag für Geschichte und
Politik, Wien 1978 (U.K. and Austria) and Kansas State Board of Agriculture,
Annual and Biennial Reports, Topeka, Kansas, 1877-1940 (Kansas). See S.J. Decanio,
W.N. Parker, and J. Trojanowski, Adjustments to Resource Depletion: The
Case of American Agriculture. Kansas, 1874-1936, ICPSR data set n. 7594 for
Kansas yield data before 1937.
37
year, and the average cereal yield was low at around 800 kilograms per
hectare. Through the 19th
century farmers optimized the traditional
low input agricultural system, increasing yields and population in tandem.
A variety of innovations boosted yields, including new crops,
new rotations, and the incorporation of yet more livestock, which required
more fodder and produced more manure.42
Cultural and institutional
changes also supported slowly increasing productivity. These
changes included the abolition of serfdom, the development of agricultural
cooperatives and integration with distant markets. Together,
this century-long process represents Austria’s participation in what European
scholars have designated as the “first agricultural revolution.”43
This process should be considered an optimization of the traditional
low-input agricultural system. It centered on biological innovations
and did not depend on external, off-farm inputs (with the exception
42
Sieferle, Das Ende cit., p. 216. Krausmann, Milk, Manure cit.
43
M. Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England, Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge 1996. M. Mazoyer, L. Roudart, and J.H. Membrez, A History of
World Agriculture: From the Neolithic Age to the Current Crisis, Earthscan, London
2006.
figure 7. Cereal yields in the Old World and the New
World, 1830 to 1940: (7a)Austria and the united Kingdom;
(7b) KansasFigure 7. Cereal yields in the Old World and the New World, 1830 to 1940: (7a)Austria and the United Kingdom; (7b)
Kansas.
7a
0
1
2
3
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
[kg/ha/yr]
Austria
United Kingdom
7b
0
1
2
3
1830
1840
1850
1860
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
1930
1940
[kg/ha/yr]
Kansas
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 38
of coal-based iron manufacturing and the expanding railroad system).
By 1914, Austrian yields had doubled from their 1830 levels.
In the United Kingdom a similar optimization process had started
much earlier. Significant yield increases were evident throughout the
18th
century, moving from yields of about 1000 kilograms per hectare
in 1700 to double that by the early 19th
century, after which they remained
stable for over 100 years. By 1830 the potential for further optimization
of low input agriculture was largely exhausted in the UK,
when it was just beginning to climb in Austria.44
Over the centuries,
Old World farmers not only managed to stabilize agricultural yields,
but to increase them steadily. The shift from production systems based
on short fallow to livestock-intensive farming and crop rotation including
leguminous crops led to increasing nitrogen stocks in the soil.
This rise in soil nutrients contributed significantly to the rising yields
observed first in England and a century later in continental Europe.45
In contrast to these two European examples, yields in Kansas
started at the astonishingly high level of as much as 3000 kilograms
per hectare when settlers began to plow the prairie in the 1870s. Kansas’s
continental location is evident in the extreme annual variability
of yields. At the center of North America, far from the ocean, and
shielded from Pacific weather systems by the high Rocky Mountains
to the west, variable annual rainfall drove annual yields more than
did soil fertility. Wet years produced bumper crops, while droughts
brought crop failure and low yields. Kansas yields were very high
by any European standard—even the dry years doubled Austrian
yields—but output was also erratic compared to Austria and the
UK, where annual rainfall was relatively consistent. But despite annual
variations caused by weather, a clear downward trend in yields
is evident. By the end of the 19th
century Kansas’ yields were below
those of the UK, and by the early 20th
they had dropped below
the steadily increasing Austrian level. As late as the 1930s, Kansas’
44
F. Krausmann, H. Schandl, and R.P. Sieferle, “Socio-ecological RegimeTransitions
in Austria and the United Kingdom”, in Ecological Economics, 65, 2008.
45
Allen, Nitrogen cit.
39
agricultural production continued its decline as farmers took more
nitrogen from the soil than they returned, year after year.
Conclusion
This study presents a detailed picture of the social ecology and
metabolic characteristics of farming systems in Decatur County,
Kansas, and their development over time. The Austrian case—that
of the rural village of Theyern—serves as a term of comparison,
providing a contrast to the Kansas farming system and helping to
highlight defining socio-ecological characteristics. Even though direct
comparability may be hampered by differences in time period,
environmental context, and institutional settings, some conclusions
about the factors that determine the socio-ecological characteristics
of farming systems and their development over time are possible.
In some respects, the two farm systems were similar. Both were
mixed farming communities that integrated cereal production with
domesticated livestock. Area productivity - the amount of food produced
per area of farmland - was similar. In 1830, one hectare of
farmland in Theyern produced about 2.9 GJ of food; in 1895, one
hectare in Finley Township, Kansas produced 4.6 GJ. Area productivity
fluctuated with rainfall in Kansas, between highs of 7 GJ and
lows of less than 1, but both farm systems were within the same
order of magnitude.
The same was not true for labor productivity. Austrian farmers
produced about 9 GJ of food per farm laborer, while those in Kansas
produced 200, 20 times their cross-Atlantic cousins. Here the
contrast could not be greater. The Theyern farm system coaxed food
from the soil through intensive applications of labor, both human
and animal. Maintaining area productivity meant high population
densities of both people and livestock to sustain soil fertility. In Kansas,
farmers needed (or invested) very little labor to produce large
amounts of food. Consequently, population and livestock densities
were lower, and declining between 1905 and 1940.
The two farm systems had different goals for optimization. The
long history of subsistence farming, the tight social networks of vil-
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 40
lage, manor, and church, and the structures of village agriculture
in Theyern aimed not at peak production but at risk minimization
and long-term sustainability.46
Theyern was not stagnant; during the
nineteenth century the community aimed first of all at long-term
food security and risk minimization, but nevertheless slowly intensified
production and raised yields. Theyern’s greatest resource was a
high labor supply, which it employed to maintain soil fertility. The
tiny, scattered village fields, managed collectively, did not encourage
peak production, but rather ensured that all families would have
diversified holdings, reducing the risk of catastrophic failure.
Finley Township, Kansas, followed a different strategy aimed at
taking advantage of new commercial grain markets in the industrializing
cities, new transportation opportunities as railroads spread across
North America, and a rich endowment of fertile soils. Here economies
of scale mattered, with large, consolidated farms. Kansas was short of
labor, but instead exploited its chief resource: abundant soil nitrogen
and organic carbon, accumulated through millennia and mined in the
first 50 years after settlement. The two systems were both efficient in
their own way. Theyern supported the most people possible over long
periods of time, usually producing enough food to keep them alive
but rarely enough to make them wealthy. Finley Township maximized
productivity, dramatically raising the standard of living for immigrants
and their descendents. The nine socio-ecological indicators discussed
in this study define and frame the two strategies.
But agricultural systems never remain static, and the social
metabolic systems in both Theyern and Finley Township changed
through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In some ways
their trajectories crossed paths. Theyern moved steadily upward from
relatively low yields and labor productivity in the early nineteenth
century to higher production and increasing labor productivity by
its end. Yields doubled over 75 years. Finley Township, for its part,
began with high yields and labor productivity in 1895, and drifted
46
For a discussion of risk minimization strategies see D. McCloskey, “English
Open Fields as Behavior Toward Risk,” in Research in Economic History, 1, 1976.
41
downward over the decades, to a nadir in the 1930s. Variable rainfall
in Kansas affected these results, but it is clear that the state had
reached a crisis of soil fertility by World War II. Thus, through the
nineteenth century and early twentieth the two farm systems diverged,
each moving in different directions.
After World War II the application of fossil fuels to agricultural
systems transformed both locations, and started a convergence toward
productivity levels never seen in the history of agriculture. The
import of energy—diesel fuel for tractors, natural gas for nitrogen
fertilizer, petroleum for pesticides, and gasoline and electricity for
a multitude of farm machinery—solved the ancient problem of soil
fertility. With fossil fuels, Theyern farmers no longer needed to invest
enormous amounts of labor in livestock to provide power and manure
that could sustain soil fertility in their crop fields. With fossil fuels,
Kansas farmers could continue farming their depleted prairie soils by
simply applying synthetic nitrogen every year as they watched crop
yields rebound, match pioneer-era levels, and then exceed any previous
production levels. It was not clear at the time, but the solution
to the age-old problem of agricultural sustainability—soil maintenance—created
a different one: unsustainable external energy inputs.
But in the gap between the soil crisis and the oil crisis, Austrian and
Kansas agricultural metabolism began to converge again, with each
moving toward high output commercial farming. By the end of the
20th
century, average cereal yields in the UK, Austria and Kansas were
at a similar level, ranging between 6.5 and 7.5 t/ha.
Pioneer farms are rarely in equilibrium with their environment.
By definition settlers undertake the task of transforming their environment
and inevitably undergo an adaptation process as they learn
the limits of their new home, its climates, soils, plants, animals, and
microorganisms. The Thir family liberated themselves from conservative
Old World institutions and constrained Old World agroecosystems.
But the farm they built on the Kansas frontier was unsustainable.
The soil mining enterprise played out over several generations,
between 1880 and 1930, but by then a soil fertility crisis loomed. It
is no coincidence that the 1930s stand out in American memory as
a time of rural crisis, population turmoil, and transformation in gov-
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 42
ernment agricultural policy. The drought, dust storms, and global
economic depression certainly contributed, but frontier farming in
the Great Plains would have faced a dramatic change even without
those forces. It was the application of fossil fuel energy that saved the
region for commercial agriculture, allowing farmers to sustain their
land use practices for another 75 years.
In a broader global context, the stories of Old World and New
World agriculture are intimately connected. Even as nitrogen flowed
through local human, livestock, and cropland systems, broader flows
across the Atlantic tethered these places to one another. The New
World agricultural frontier provided novel opportunities for European
farmers escaping subsistence lifestyles, and millions followed the
Thirs and Demmers across the ocean. The grain and beef they produced
flowed the other way, flooding Europe with cheap American
food that undermined farm villages across the continent. It was that
economic pressure on traditional European agriculture that forced
innovation and led to Austria’s steadily increasing yields in the late
nineteenth century. Economists have argued that highly efficient New
World farmers thus pressured backward and inefficient Old World
people to improve agriculture (which some did) or to abandon it
for industrializing cities (which most did).47
This study points out
an ecological component to the story that economists have missed
or downplayed. One of the key reasons New World farmers were
so efficient and able to produce such stupendous crop surpluses for
export between 1870 and 1930 was their endowment of stockpiled
soil nutrients. For over half a century Great Plains farmers mined
47
Y. Hayami and V.W. Ruttan, Agricultural Development: An International Perspective,
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1985. K.G. Persson, Grain
Markets in Europe, 1500-1900: Integration and Deregulation, CUP, Cambridge
1999. J.G. Williamson, Globalization and the Poor Periphery before 1950, MIT
Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2006. J.L. Van Zanden, “The First Green Revolution:
The Growth of Production and Productivity in European Agriculture,
1870-1914”, Economic History Review, 44, 2, 1991. N. Koning, The Failure of
Agrarian Capitalism: Agrarian Politics in the UK, Germany, Netherlands, and the
USA, 1846-1919, Routledge, New York 1994.
43
their rich soils and dumped those nutrients on the world market, disrupting
risk-averse, long-lasting agricultural systems across the ocean.
New World farming could not be sustained over the long term yet it
undermined Old World systems that had been in place for centuries.
Then, as the mid twentieth century soil depletion crisis loomed, fossil
fuel fertilizers and other high energy inputs rescued farmers, as the
developed world substituted oil for soil.
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 44
Table S2: Population, land use, livestock and crop production
on Thir farm, 1895 to 1940Table S2: Population, land use, livestock and crop production on Thir farm, 1895 to 1940
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population persons 4 5 4 3 3 3 3 3
Agricultural population persons 4 5 4 3 3 3 3 3
Farms number 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Total area ha 65 130 259 162 162 162 227 227
Cropland ha 25 52 118 59 75 80 88 134
Corn ha 20 8 8 12 16 26 24 28
Wheat ha 3 32 81 40 49 51 57 34
Barley ha 0 5 0 2 6 0 4 0
All other crops ha 1 7 29 4 4 3 3 71
Grassland ha 40 77 141 103 87 82 138 93
All other land ha 1 2 4 2 2 2 3 3
Cattle head 1 22 26 30 21 11 25 4
Horses (and mules) head 3 5 8 9 9 8 5 Pigs
head 1 11 5 7 10 3 1 9
Corn (harvest) t 29 19 17 23 15 52 6 12
Wheat (harvest) t 1 39 76 49 29 44 27 11
Barley (harvest) t 0 9 0 3 6 0 2 0
Sources: see text
Table S1: Population, land use, livestock and crop production
in Finley Township, 1895 to 1940
SUPPORTING TABLES
To manuscript:
Cunfer, G. and F.Krausmann, Sustaining Soil Fertility: Agricultural Practice in the Old and New Worlds, submitted
to Global Environment, April 2009.
These Tables can appear as an Appendix to the text or as online supporting material to be downloaded from the data portal of
our web page (http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/socec/inhalt/1088.htm)
Table S1: Population, land use, livestock and crop production in Finley Township, 1895 to 1940.
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population persons 227 389 341 392 373 379 n,d, n,d,
Agricultural population persons 169 332 260 286 230 255 287 259
Farms number 32 64 58 65 63 64 72 65
Total area (land in farms) ha 2,939 8,320 7,376 10,006 9,487 8,792 9,233 8,761
Cropland ha 1,341 3,545 5,048 4,643 5,344 4,780 4,938 5,142
Corn ha 830 1,095 1,079 783 1,778 1,571 1,784 1,383
Wheat ha 291 1,509 3,148 3,186 2,957 2,738 2,116 1,416
Barley ha - 373 177 212 128 181 219 639
All other crops ha 220 568 645 462 482 290 819 1,704
Grassland ha 1,598 4,775 2,328 5,364 4,142 4,012 4,295 3,619
All other land ha 44 125 111 150 142 132 139 131
Cattle head 161 1,541 557 1,035 1,244 432 1,548 701
Horses (and mules) head 136 435 497 656 556 299 257 Pigs
head 167 1,749 531 335 1,114 344 222 30
Corn (harvest) t 1,173 2,580 2,203 1,476 1,676 3,085 420 565
Wheat (harvest) t 117 1,825 2,961 3,853 1,788 2,392 995 447
Barley (harvest) t - 663 314 319 117 263 106 299
Sources: see text
Appendix: Supporting Tables*
45
Table S3: Socio-ecological characteristics, finley Township,
1895 to 1940
Table S3: Socio-ecological characteristics, Finley Township, 1895 to 1940
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population density cap/km² 2.5 4.2 3.7 4.2 4.0 4.1 n.d. n.d.
Farm size ha of agricultural area per farm 92 130 127 154 151 137 128 135
Land availability ha of agricultural area per capita 17 25 28 35 41 34 32 34
Land availability
ha of agricultural area per agric.
laborer 36 45 47 58 69 59 55 58
Grain yield kg/ha/yr 1,141 1,687 1,244 1,351 736 1,278 370 378
Area productivity GJ/ha/yr 4.6 4.9 7.0 5.1 1.7 6.5 0.4 1.6
Labor productivity GJ/laborer/yr 168 220 327 293 114 385 19 92
Marketable crop
production % of total production 74% 53% 69% 66% 26% 72% -14% 43%
Livestock density
Large animal units (500 kg live
weight) per km² agric. area 4.2 22.9 13.2 14.5 17.8 7.5 14.9 4.9
Nitrogen return on
cropland % of total extraction 27% 30% 30% 22% 38% 21% 68% 51%
Installed power kW per ha of cropland 0.15 0.18 0.14 0.22 0.18 0.16 0.15 n.d.
Sources: see text
Table S4: Socio-ecological characteristics, Thir farm, 1895 to 1940
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population density cap/km² 6.2 3.9 1.5 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.3 1.3
Farm size ha of agricultural area per farm 65 130 259 162 162 162 227 227
Land availability ha of agricultural area per capita 16 26 65 54 54 54 76 76
Land availability
ha of agricultural area per agric.
laborer 32 43 86 54 54 54 76 76
Grain yield kg/ha/yr 1,274 1,427 1,041 1,371 709 1,246 406 369
Area productivity GJ/ha/yr 4.9 4.8 3.1 3.7 1.3 5.4 0.5 0.7
Labor productivity GJ/laborer/yr 159 209 267 198 68 293 34 55
Marketable crop
production % of total production 75% 59% 59% 54% 23% 65% 6% 33%
Livestock density
Large animal units (500 kg live
weight) per km² agric. area 4.2 17.7 10.5 20.0 16.3 10.1 11.1 2.1
Nitrogen return on
cropland % of total extraction 20% 22% 58% 25% 39% 21% 58% 47%
Installed power kW per ha of cropland 0.18 0.14 0.10 0.22 0.18 0.15 0.30 n.d.
Sources: see text
Table S4: Socio-ecological characteristics, Thir farm,
1895 to 1940
Table S3: Socio-ecological characteristics, Finley Township, 1895 to 1940
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population density cap/km² 2.5 4.2 3.7 4.2 4.0 4.1 n.d. n.d.
Farm size ha of agricultural area per farm 92 130 127 154 151 137 128 135
Land availability ha of agricultural area per capita 17 25 28 35 41 34 32 34
Land availability
ha of agricultural area per agric.
laborer 36 45 47 58 69 59 55 58
Grain yield kg/ha/yr 1,141 1,687 1,244 1,351 736 1,278 370 378
Area productivity GJ/ha/yr 4.6 4.9 7.0 5.1 1.7 6.5 0.4 1.6
Labor productivity GJ/laborer/yr 168 220 327 293 114 385 19 92
Marketable crop
production % of total production 74% 53% 69% 66% 26% 72% -14% 43%
Livestock density
Large animal units (500 kg live
weight) per km² agric. area 4.2 22.9 13.2 14.5 17.8 7.5 14.9 4.9
Nitrogen return on
cropland % of total extraction 27% 30% 30% 22% 38% 21% 68% 51%
Installed power kW per ha of cropland 0.15 0.18 0.14 0.22 0.18 0.16 0.15 n.d.
Sources: see text
Table S4: Socio-ecological characteristics, Thir farm, 1895 to 1940
Variable Unit 1895 1905 1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940
Population density cap/km² 6.2 3.9 1.5 1.9 1.9 1.9 1.3 1.3
Farm size ha of agricultural area per farm 65 130 259 162 162 162 227 227
Land availability ha of agricultural area per capita 16 26 65 54 54 54 76 76
Land availability
ha of agricultural area per agric.
laborer 32 43 86 54 54 54 76 76
Grain yield kg/ha/yr 1,274 1,427 1,041 1,371 709 1,246 406 369
Area productivity GJ/ha/yr 4.9 4.8 3.1 3.7 1.3 5.4 0.5 0.7
Labor productivity GJ/laborer/yr 159 209 267 198 68 293 34 55
Marketable crop
production % of total production 75% 59% 59% 54% 23% 65% 6% 33%
Livestock density
Large animal units (500 kg live
weight) per km² agric. area 4.2 17.7 10.5 20.0 16.3 10.1 11.1 2.1
Nitrogen return on
cropland % of total extraction 20% 22% 58% 25% 39% 21% 58% 47%
Installed power kW per ha of cropland 0.18 0.14 0.10 0.22 0.18 0.15 0.30 n.d.
Sources: see text
*
Sources: see the text. These tables can be downloaded from the data portal of
the web page: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/socec/inhalt/1088.htm
RESEARCH ARTICLES / Cunfer and Krausmann 46
Table S5: Population, land use, livestock and crop production
in Theyern municipality, 1829
Table S5: Population, land use, livestock and crop production in Theyern municipality, 1829
Variable Unit 1829
Population persons 102
Agricultural population persons 102
Farms number 17
Total area ha 225
Cropland ha 135
Rye ha 41
Cereal mix ha 41
All other crops ha 13
Fallow ha 28
Grassland ha 7
Woodland ha 79
All other land ha 4
Cattle head 85
Horses and mules head 5
Pigs head 42
Sheep head 77
Rye (harvest) t 35
Cereal mix (Linsgetreide) (harvest) t 32
Sources: see text
47
Table S6: Socio-ecological characteristics, Theyern municipality,
1829
Table S6: Socio-ecological characteristics, Theyern municipality, 1829
Variable Unit 1829
Population density cap/km² 45.3
Farm size ha of agricultural area per farm 13
Land availability ha of agricultural area per capita 2
Land availability ha of agricultural area per agr. laborer 3
Grain yield kg/ha/yr 819
Area productivity GJ/ha/yr 4.4
Labor productivity GJ/laborer/yr 9
Marketable production % of total production 25%
Livestock density
Large animal units (500 kg live
weight) per km² agric. area 24
Nitrogen return on cropland % of total extraction 92%
Installed power kW per ha of cropland 0.17
Sources: see text