Századok – 2022

2022 / 5. szám - TERMÉSZET – TÁJ – TÖRTÉNET - Demeter Gábor – Szilágyi Zsolt – Pinke Zsolt: Sártenger és búzatenger. Mérlegen az alföldi gabonakonjunktúra és a vízszabályozások regionális következményei (1720–2020)

DEMETER GÁBOR - SZILÁGYI ZSOLT - PINKE

ZSOLT

SEA OF MUD, SEA OF GRAIN

The Cereal Boom on the Great Hungarian Plain and the Regional Consequences of Waterway Regulation in the Balance (1720-2020)

By Gábor

Demeter

- Zsolt Szilágyi

- Zsolt Pinke

SUMMARY

The paper seeks the historical roots of the backwardness of those areas on the Great Hungarian Plain where, despite their peripheric position and unfavourable agroecological features, monocultural

grain

production still dominates. Behind the arguments that justified the advance of grain (flood prevention, security of supply, surplus revenue), it explores those underlying but real forces (climate, overpopulation, price trends, land speculation) that, along with to waterway regulation, resulted in the shrinking of animal husbandry and the long-term emergence of an unprofitable economic system. Using historical statistical methods, the authors explore the features of the area in terms of demography, land use, and agricultural yields in the eighteenth century, how these justified the consequent transformations, and the ways in which such features changed due to the regulations. They analyse the advantages of grain production versus cattle breeding, as well as the impact of the monocultural

turn,

generated by outside forces, on the well-being, inequalities, and demographic relations of the local society and on the ecological carrying capacity of the land, during the cereal boom and in the long run. After all, who paid the bills for the regulation of the Tisza river?

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