Papers by Pieter De Graef
In peasant studies as well as agricultural and economic history, little is known about the diffus... more In peasant studies as well as agricultural and economic history, little is known about the diffusion of new agricultural knowledge in peasant regions and the ways in which smallholding families gained confidence to adopt new approaches to their farming activities. New agricultural innovations—especially those that required substantial cash outlays—were kept at arm's length because of the outcome's uncertainty, which could harm the survival strategies of smallholding peasants. Tis article elaborates on the spread of two innovative fertilizer improvements—animal urine and lime—in the eighteenth-century smallholding economy of Inland Flanders. It argues that farm size and social relations between smallholding peasants and larger farmers played a pivotal role in the dissemination of fertilizer knowledge. Smallholders did not stick to the safe application of current manures but instead adopted these new innovations after they saw the benefits on pioneering large farms. Tis study, therefore, confirms much about our understandings of a peasant behavior of risk limitation, yet also challenges it.
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Profound changes in output and productivity characterised eighteenth-century agriculture, both in... more Profound changes in output and productivity characterised eighteenth-century agriculture, both in regions of large-scale capitalist farming and smallholding cultivation. Aggregate, macro-level studies offer valuable insights, but often prove unable to explain yield increases. Therefore, this article proposes a social approach to agricultural production through a micro-level analysis of fertilisation strategies, taking the smallholding economy of inland Flanders as a starting point. The household perspective demonstrates that a green ‘fertiliser’ revolution with increasing levels of fertilising intensity and off-farm nutrient inputs was instigated from below on both small and large holdings as a response to the broader economic and societal situation.
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Alternative approaches to resolve bottlenecks in food production often champion the reuse of urba... more Alternative approaches to resolve bottlenecks in food production often champion the reuse of urban organic waste as fertiliser in agriculture in order to close the nutrient cycle between city and country (cradle to cradle). References are often made to the past because environmental historians tend to work the use of urban wastes into a story of environmental symbiosis between city and countryside. This article argues, however, that closed nutrient cycles did not exist even in pre-industrial society, as the way in which agriculture was structured had a huge impact on the demand for manure. Starting from two agricultural regions in eighteenth-century Flanders, this research calls for more attention to regional structures of agriculture in which cities were embedded and to how these agro-systems shaped nutrient flows from the city to the country by very diverse patterns of demand for fertilisers, leading to unequal redistributive flows of nutrients from towns to different agricultural regions.
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Stadsgeschiedenis, 2017
Ook dit jaar neemt Stadsgeschiedenis een overzicht op van wat er verschenen is in Belgische en Ne... more Ook dit jaar neemt Stadsgeschiedenis een overzicht op van wat er verschenen is in Belgische en Nederlandse historische tijdschriften en jaarboeken, een rubriek die al sinds 2009 in stand wordt gehouden. De massa aan tijdschriftartikels, working papers op websites en platforms zoals Academia.edu en ResearchGate maakt het immers vrijwel onmogelijk voor de individuele onderzoeker om systematisch alle historische tijdschriften te doorzoeken, wat tot gevolg heeft dat vele bijdragen in lokale stadshistorische tijdschriften onopgemerkt blijven. In samenhang met de jaarlijkse review over de bijdragen in internationale tijdschriften heeft deze rubriek tot doel de laatste ontwikkelingen in het stadshistorische veld te signaleren. 58 historische tijdschriften van jaargang 2015 werden door een groep stadshistorici doorgenomen om uiteindelijk tot voorliggende selectie van 67 verschillende artikels te komen.
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Did urban manure nourish the country? Consequences of fertiliser improvement in 18 th-century Fle... more Did urban manure nourish the country? Consequences of fertiliser improvement in 18 th-century Flemish farming Although traditional societies faced constraints on nutrient availability, the contribution of manuring in general and fertilisation with urban and industrial fer-tilisers in particular to agricultural growth has hardly been assessed. This article takes the eighteenth-century smallholding economy of the very productive Flemish Husbandry as its starting point and argues on the basis of a micro-level research that both smallholders and larger farmers were prompted to change their fertilisation patterns in the decades after 1750. As a reaction to the economic situation and the landowners' efforts to nibble at profits by setting higher rents, turning to the use of off-farm fertilisers and intensifying farm production became a compelling strategy for smallholders to safeguard their survival strategies and for larger farmers to retain reasonable profit margins.
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The Agricultural history review
ABSTRACT
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In de premoderne samenleving kan het meststoffentekort beschouwd worden als één van de grootste f... more In de premoderne samenleving kan het meststoffentekort beschouwd worden als één van de grootste flessenhalzen van de landbouw. Naast het zorgvuldig verzamelen van hoeve-eigen mest, ontdekten zowel vroegmoderne agronomen als hedendaagse historici een spraakmakende oplossing voor dit probleem in het landbouw-systeem van Binnen-Vlaanderen: het systematisch gebruik van stadsmest en industrieel afval. Dit verschafte meer nutriënten voor de landbouw en bood tegelijkertijd een oplossing voor dat andere grote milieuprobleem: stedelijke afvalverwijdering. De vraag werpt zich echter op in hoeverre de kleine Vlaamse peasant in staat was om zich toereikende hoeveelheden stadsmest aan te schaffen dan wel of het niet eerder de grote paardenboeren waren die de vruchten van de mesthandel plukten. Deze bijdrage wil zowel een historiografische stand van zaken bieden als via micro-onderzoek naar mestgebruik en mesthandel toekomstige onderzoekspistes aanreiken.
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Conference Presentations by Pieter De Graef
For the ESSHC 2018-conference in Belfast, I should like to organise a session on the adoption or ... more For the ESSHC 2018-conference in Belfast, I should like to organise a session on the adoption or non-adoption of alternative income strategies in agriculture. Therefore, I am in search for participants for this session to present a paper. I also send you a small and provisional abstract of the session's theme. Present-day agriculturalists are confronted with low and volatile prices for their produce and income disparity with other social groups remains a key issue for the next Common Agricultural Policy. The liberalisation of world trade is not without guilt in that respect. In the past, farmers also faced periods of declining prices and thus reduced income possibilities due to a decline in food demand (as a result of a falling population rate, e.g. in the aftermath of the Black Death) or to a major increase in the supply of food imported from other regions (like the impact of the Agricultural Invasion with European markets being flooded with lots of cheap cereals from America leading to the Agricultural Depression in the final quarter of the 19 th century) or simply because of higher levels of surplus extraction by the state or by landowners. Joan Thirsk argued that precisely in these periods of falling prices of mainstream food crops (cereals), phases of 'Alternative Agriculture' flourished as farmers sought and found other ways of adding to their income by growing alternative crops (such as hops, rapeseed, industrial crops, market gardening) or livestock (dairying, poultry keeping, raising pigs). However, some farmers didn't decide to diversify their farming strategy by means of alternatives for the main food crops and increasingly specialised in these staple foods. It was often in such a context that technological innovation further advanced, because the innovative techniques were likely to spur production, so that the average fixed production costs lowered. Yet, many questions remain unanswered with respect to the adoption or non-adoption of alternative income strategies. This session aims to focus on cultivators – in both the sense of large farmers and smallholding peasants – who were confronted with adverse economic conditions and study how these farming families adapted their income strategies to this situation, either by diversifying their farm produce or specialising in mainstream agriculture. Interesting questions/issues to address would be the following:
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Papers by Pieter De Graef
Conference Presentations by Pieter De Graef