Because of its climate and terrain, large parts of Scandinavia pose problems for agriculture. The Scandinavian countries are situated between around 54 and 70 degrees north, thus forming the northernmost part of Western Christendom. In addition to being far north, large parts of Scandinavia are also highland, particularly in Norway, and to some extent also in northern Sweden. However, because of the Gulf Stream, the climate is far warmer than in any other part of the world at this latitude—by as much as 5 to 7 degrees C. Thus, it is possible to grow grain at around 70 degrees north in Norway.
Tarım
Ortaçağ Tarım Yöntemleri ve Hayvancılık
Wheat gave the most nutritious and palatable bread; barley and oats could be made into an inferior bread, or could be malted and brewed into ale, or, like the peas and beans, be boiled for pottage; oats and beans could also be fed to animals. The cultivators had to be careful to combine their arable with grassland and wood. The best way of maintaining the quality of the soil – or even of creating a decent seedbed in the case of the heavier clay soils – was to keep a good proportion of land as grass or hay meadow, so that animals could be fed and their manure used to spread on the fields. Sheep were especially efficient sources of fertilizer, because they could be fed on pasture land in the day, and penned at night on the land on which crops were to be sown. Not only would they deposit their manure, but their small sharp hoofs would tread the droppings into the surface. Animals were themselves an important source of food – medieval people lived not by bread and pottage alone – and their muscle power was essential for ploughing and hauling.
Ortadoğuda Sulama Sistemi
The qanat or karez irrigation system brought water from the highlands to the lowlands through a series of underground canals and reservoirs. By keeping the water underground, less was lost to evaporation and this made arid regions bloom. It was, however, labour-intensive to maintain, and without a population to maintain it the karez system broke down and arable areas returned to scrub or desert. The system had been widely used since the ancient period, and some areas of Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan still use it today. Access points followed the underground portion and permitted repairs to the underground channels. Additionally, the water cooled these spots, providing relief to workers during the summer.
Tarımın İnsana Negatif Etkisi
despite the widespread assumption that agriculture was good for you because it yields a significant improvement in nutrition for less effort, it seems that the opposite was in fact true. Evidence from physiological stress signs in skeletons and calculation of the energy throughput for hunter-gatherer and early farmer populations living in the same region show rather starkly that the farmers were under much greater nutritional stress than the hunter-gatherers. Farming was extremely hard work and subject to the vagaries of climate as well as the depredations of wildlife and pests. It seems these populations had little choice: they could not pursue a hunter-gatherer life even if they wanted to but instead were obliged to live in settlements and put up with the significant costs of doing so. In short, people did not live in villages in order to develop agriculture, but developed agriculture in order to live in villages, at least once these settlements achieved any significant size.
Salgın Korkusuyla Farklı Hayvan Beslemek
There was an elaborate calculation whereby peasants and estate managers decided on the proportion of draught animals to keep, but no one by preference depended on just one sort of draught beast, for fear of disease. Every village, every estate in northern Europe usually had a generous mix of cattle and horses.
Tarım Teknolojisinin Yavaş Gelişme Sebebi
Purchase of a new plough, putting a few more oxen out to pasture, a farmer’s use of an unconventional new horse collar – events like these did not happen often and did not lead immediately to widespread change. Village life was cautious; decisions on major issues like how and what to plant were usually collective; and caution and consensus favoured conservatism. Survival was not to be put at risk by the promiscuous adoption of new techniques or by over-investment in animals that might die with inadequate winter fodder or by any other uncertain innovations.
Great Britain’in Tarımda Gerilemesi ve Kuşatmayla Kıtlık Tehdidi
full force of overseas agricultural competition, crop farming in Great Britain decayed drastically.2 Cheaper bread for consumers, however beneficial to the urban working classes, also meant a radically increased vulnerability. By the 1880s, when 65 percent of Britain’s grain came from overseas, a fleet of enemy cruisers capable of intercepting grain shipments from the other side of the Atlantic could be expected to bring Great Britain face to face with starvation in a matter of months.
Roma Devrinde Tahıl Kuşağı Doğal Sınır
The territory of the Roman Empire, for all its imperial ambitions, did not extend much beyond the grain line. Roman rule north of the Alps was concentrated in what archaeologists term, after the Swiss site at which its artifacts were first found, La Tène zone, where population was denser, agricultural production more robust and towns (oppida culture) larger; outside this zone lay “Jastorf Europe,” thinly populated and characterized by pastoralism and swiddening.27 This contrast is a salutary reminder that outside the earliest grain state lay most of the world and its population as well. The grain states were restricted to a narrow ecological niche that favored intensive agriculture.
Zirai Hastalıkla Mücadele İçin Geniş Alana Yayılma
Various techniques were devised to reduce the labor involved and improve the yields. Fields were scattered so that they were less contiguous; fallowing and crop rotation was practiced; and seed was procured at a distance to reduce genetic uniformity.
Ortaçağ Sıcak İkliminin Etkisi
From around the year 1000 Europe’s population boomed, in tandem with a surge in agricultural production. The Medieval Climate Optimum was kind to farmers, and huge new tracts of land were brought under the plough through forest clearances and marsh-draining. Territory was seized from itinerant, pagan Slavs and put under Christian ploughs – a process which started with the Carolingians and continued under the crusaders.24 New farming technologies were developed, with heavy ploughs improving soil quality and the ‘three-field’ crop rotation system preventing soil exhaustion. Shipbuilding also improved, making long voyages by sea safer and faster – whether those voyages were for Viking-style slave-taking and monastery-plundering or buying and selling goods in foreign markets. And from the time of Charlemagne onwards, western Christian monarchs slowly began to stake their claims to ever-larger kingdoms, subjecting them to deeper mechanisms of royal control and governance which (in theory at least) made longer overland trading journeys safer and more secure.