Loss of Agroforestry: Symbolic Annihilation of Mixed Cultures in 19th Century Agricultural Science

• Main Author: Krčmářová Jana
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Sciendo 2020-12-01
• Series: European Countryside
• Subjects: industrial agriculture; local knowledge; symbolic annihilation; knowledge loss; agroforestry
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.2478/euco-2020-0032

There is a lot of promise seen in agroforestry—the deliberate keeping of trees on farmland in various forms and contexts. The Czechia, like many other European countries, experiences farmland soil degradation and erosion, climate and water regime changes, and biodiversity loss. Industrial agriculture with high inputs brings not only high yields but also numerous negative externalities. Mixed cultures on Czech lands were common just 150 years ago. However, they were left out of the new cadastral classification in the 19th century and, as this article shows, did not appear in modern agricultural (and forestry) scientific theory- represented by contemporary scholar book selection in this article. The symbolic annihilation of agroforestry cultures in the official agrarian discourse of the 19th century probably contributed to their disappearance from both land-use theory and practice.