Abstract
In the mid-1960s, fertilization (with nitrogen) had a breakthrough as a promising forest management method in Swedish company owned forests. The activity grew and peaked during the 1970s but then lost ground and stabilized at a low level in the 1990s and early 2000s. Over the last five years, however, interest in fertilizing Swedish forests has increased again. In this article both the forestry industry’s, and the environmental movement’s, attitudes toward forest fertilization over time are investigated. Furthermore, conflicting persistent ideas about nature and future, i.e., “figures of thought”, within interest groups, representing forestry and the environmental movement respectively, are identified and analyzed in relation to the debate on fertilization. The analysis reveals mainly three figures of thought that have influenced this debate during the period, “the idea of progress”, “the idea of decay” and “the idea of the great chain of being”. The study thus sheds light on how the relationship between forestry and the environmental movement has evolved from the 1960s until today and uncovers thought patterns that have stood, and continue to stand, in opposition to one another.
Highlights
Since the 1950s the fertilization of forested land using nitrogen has been promoted as one of the most effective and cost-effective methods of rapidly increasing tree increment, and thereby, forest owners‘ opportunities to increase timber harvest
The purpose of this article is to investigate both the forestry industry‘s, and the environmental movement‘s, attitudes toward forest fertilization over time, as well as to uncover on a deeper level the different ―figures of thought‖ that have manifested themselves in the debate between the two groups
We look for elements in the argumentation which relate to a broader framework within which forest fertilization is understood by the opposing sides in the debate
Summary
Since the 1950s the fertilization of forested land using nitrogen has been promoted as one of the most effective and cost-effective methods of rapidly increasing tree increment, and thereby, forest owners‘ opportunities to increase timber harvest. Nitrogen fertilization first became widely used within. Swedish company- and state-owned forests in the mid-1960s, reaching a peak of approximately. 190,000 hectares a year in the mid 1970s (Figure 1). The total use of synthetic fertilizers in all sectors in Sweden increased from 80,000 tons per year in. The annual use of nitrogen increased from 30,000 to 233,000 tons. Agriculture has always been the largest consumer of synthetic fertilizers. In the beginning of the 1970s, statistics showed that agriculture consumed
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