How to read the history of agriculture in rural landscapes

Since the beginning of the industrial era and with mechanization, agricultural practices have evolved significantly. This has favored rural exodus, particularly marked throughout the 20th century. Today, these spaces are generally overgrown with brush or forests. However, when we walk through our rural landscapes, whether in the mountains or in the plains, we can wonder what these spaces looked like in the past. To do this, we will see what signs to look for in order to imagine what this landscape might have looked like in the past.

Ruins

The first sign of former agricultural activity that we can look for is old houses or barns. One must be observant because sometimes these signs can be heavily covered by vegetation. If, during a walk in the forest, you observe ruins in the middle of nowhere, it indicates past human activity. In most cases, these were houses used for agriculture and rarely for forestry or hunting activities. For example, when I went to the forests above the commune of Tamsweg in Austria, I observed several log cabins. These cabins were not forester’s cabins but rather shelters found in alpine pastures. In other regions, we will simply find the foundations of buildings, consisting of simple stone walls. Therefore, when we find these lost in the middle of the forest or in fallow areas, we can say that initially, these spaces were alpine pastures or places where there were agricultural activities. These ruins then testify to an agricultural past, with a mountain made up of large meadows. Today, these meadows have been reconquered by the forest or by fallow lands, a consequence of agricultural abandonment. However, old houses are not the only traces of the past.

Terraces

In regions with marked topography, we sometimes find terraces on steep slopes. These are generally in fallow today or used as pastures for animals. These terraces testify to a much more agricultural past than today. Farmers of the past built them to have more land for crops. In addition to creating flat surfaces for cultivation, it also allowed for increased soil depth and thus better water reserves. These practices were very common in areas with high water pressure. This practice is thus widespread in the Mediterranean region.

Stone Walls

In the same type of traces of the agricultural past, we find stone walls. These stone walls, which we can find almost everywhere, testify to the demarcation of fields to make enclosures. Today, they are generally half-collapsed, sometimes in the heart of forests or in the middle of fields. The construction of walls had a double interest: creating enclosures and removing stones from the fields to make them more easily cultivable. In some places where fields had many stones, we can also see large piles of stones, still witnesses of agriculture.

Trees

We can also study traces of another nature to understand the agricultural model of the past. We need to turn to the trees. In the past, trees could serve agriculture in bocage hedges in particular. These hedges had much more utility than today. They could serve for the production of fruits, fodder for animals, or wood. Today, these uses are only marginal because they are no longer profitable (too much time spent for too little benefit). Thus, these hedges have been partly cut down or left abandoned. However, in some abandoned spaces, the hedges have remained in place. We can still see today that these trees were part of agriculture. It is simple to make this observation when they are fruit trees because they do not exist in the wild. Another type of tree testifies to its past use for producing fodder or wood. These are trees pruned into pollards. A pollarded tree is cut at 4 or 5 meters high every 3 or 4 years. This produces wood and fodder, especially in drought years. This forms a sort of bulge at the top of the trunk where it is cut each year. When this tree is no longer maintained, it will regain the shape of a tree with vertical growth. However, this bulge remains visible. This allows us to say that there was certainly exploitation of this tree, with probably agricultural activity around it. These are living witnesses of the evolution of agriculture.

Conclusion

When we walk through our countryside, we can try to imagine what agriculture looked like in the past. However, the agricultural landscape is not the only one that has undergone rural exodus and socio-economic changes since the 1950s. Tourism, urbanization, and the evolution of transportation methods have also strongly contributed to this evolution. To understand the evolution of rural landscapes, we must understand all the factors that contributed to their change.