Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Fussel, George Edwin: What is traditional agriculture

western Europe 'and the U.S.A. (for different reasons in the two areas it is true) from more simple and less productive methods. But even today these modern technical methods are not practised everywhere, nd by all the farmers in these areas of the earth's surface. Where they are, they have been developed slowly through the ages by trial and error of new ways of doing old things. This is perhaps only to repeat what I have already said, i.e., that farmers, more particularly perhaps in western Europe, have always been transforming traditional agriculture in the attempt to do better for themselves than their fathers were able to. I suppose this is what always stimulates innovation! May I here digress to make a few remarks on this kind of change during historical times, though I cannot hope to say anything on the subject that is not already well known to you. For long periods of time there were systems of agriculture in Europe that might well have been called traditional though they have been so changed and modified that only traces of these systems remain today ; but it must be emphasized that those traces, which are only traces to the historian, have a very marked effect upon the life of the peasants who still conduct their farms in much the same way as their remote ancestors. Written records relating to farming have naturally only survived from those civilisations that had developed writing, and are perhaps more descriptive records than those remaining on the ground, or under it that archaeology relies upon. I shall not here discuss the farming systems of Ancient India, Mesopotamia or Egypt, but shall content myself with the rather different systems of the sub-tropical lands that border on the Mediterranean. For some of these there are written records, in the form of didactic writings, that have survived to this day or in the other form of papers describing for purposes of account, the day to day activities on a farm — such as ROSTOVTZEFF used for example. The crop lands were cultivated on a very simple system. After two or three ploughings, usually with a symmetrical plough hauled by two oxen, the seed was sown by hand broadcasting, and the harvest reaped with a sickle. The land was left fallow in the following year, and ploughed once or twice in a feeble attempt to destroy weeds and restore fertility. In its more complex form a catch crop of legumes might be sowed, possibly ploughed in as green manure, or harvested for fodder. A more complex kind of plough may have been used in Rhaetia and possibly in Gaul where a primitive type of grain harvester was also used. This elementary process has continued to the present day in some parts of southern Europe, and may well be regarded as traditional agriculture there. Vines were cultivated supported by elm trees, often forming a sort of shelter for cereals planted on the land between the rows. This is, of course, a very simplified statement, but is an attempt to demonstrate that the system with very slight modifications continued, perhaps with a longer fallow in places according to Professor DUBY, throughout the Middle Ages, and until modern times. In northern Europe, including England, a different system became the practice in the ninth century, if not before. It was the well-known and much discussed open field system where the individual holdings consisted of long rectangular strips of land a number of which distributed over the fields made up the farm of each person, and were intermingled with the strips farmed by other members of the village community. The work was done with an asym-