A case study of the Czech agriculture since 1918 in a socio-metabolic perspective – From land reform through nationalisation to privatisation

Abstract

This article explores the development of the social metabolism of Czech agriculture over the past 80 years and aims to describe the complex agricultural system from a biophysical perspective. As a Central European country, the Czech Republic's political system has experienced a number of turning points and changes in its history. Using the social metabolism concept and the material and energy flow method of analysis this article looks at the system from a biophysical perspective and explores the interactions between the economic system and nature. The present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia (Czechoslovakia before 1993) are successor countries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From 1918 to 1938, the Czech lands (Bohemia and Moravia) were part of the market-oriented, capitalist and democratic Czechoslovakia, which turned into a socialist centrally planned system in 1948 and then back into a market-oriented economy in 1989. The Czech Republic and Slovakia both joined the European Union in 2004. This article presents selected indicators covering the period between 1920 and the present, indicators such as the fossil energy use, labour in the agro-ecological system (i.e. particularly human and animal labour), domestic extraction (DE), and last but not least the production–energy use ratio, all expressed in units of energy. As a complement, information is also included on land use and the number of agricultural workers and livestock, and on the physical balance of foreign trade for the last ten years of the studied period. These indicators are also linked to political and economic historical events.