The Changes of Agricultural Land Use in the Village of Zehnhausen, the Hoher Westerwald in West Germany

Abstract

There has been a particular land use system in each traditional peasant society. The peasants in the highly industrialized countries, however, have had to transform their traditional land use systems facing the process of urbanization and industrialization in their society. In this study a village of the Hoher Westerwald is selected as the study area where peasant farms have dominated, and the way how the peasants have transformed the traditional land use system (infield-outfied system) is analized. Particular attention is paid to the way each farm allocates the land with various conditions to different uses and how the land use pattern has been formed as a result of the complied decisions made by each farm.We recognized the following four groups of features of land use change in the village of Zehnhausen, based on the comparison of the land use maps in 1938 and 1977, on the study of Wagner and the statistics;1. Decrease of farmland, expansion of afforested area, and appearance of abandoned farmland2. Enlargement of grassland, decrease of arable land, and disappearance of Triesch (outfield)3. Expansion of cereal producing area in remaining arable land5. Disappearance of communal pastures and appearance of private pastures.The enlargement of grassland accompanied by the decrease of arable land and the disappearance of Triesch, is explained by the specialization of farming form to dairy farming under cool and wet climatic conditions. It is also explained by the abandonment of arable land, which returned to the natural succession process. Expanding cereal producing area on the remaining arable land accompanied the decrease of root crop acreage. This was due to mechanization and enlargement of farm size, which are closely connected with each other, in order to minimize labour input. Another factor to have influenced it was the decline of self sufficient farming due to the abandonment of farming at small farms or to the change to part-time farming with decreased labour input. Disappearance of communal pastures was caused by motorization and mechanization of farming which sharply reduced the number of work cows. On the other hand, the farmers with cows changed the private meadow land to private pasture. The farmland refusing mechanization such as steep slopes, that of thin soils or on highland marsh were abondoned, partly reflecting the mountainous natural conditions and wet and cool climate of the region. The appearance of these abandoned farmland was multiplied by social fallow which the reduction of farm size due to increasing part-time works in non-agricultural industries and the cease of farming operation brought about. The lack of medium-sized farms strongly influenced the process. Medium-sized farms, which could enlarge their farm size, were lacking, while small or petty farms abandoned their subsistent farming. Most of the land has been afforested and some parts of it are used as fish feeding ponds, camping sites and weekened houses.We will summarize the features of land use patterns and their changes. Each of the farms in the Hoher Westerwald used the dry upland of his holdings as permanent arable land and the land in alluvial plains along brooks as meadow (Figure 7-a). The transition zone between these two sections was used as Triesch. Communal pastures and forests were allocated on the land unsuitable for arable farming or on the site far from the settlement and were used by the farmers of the community. Each farm consisted of the land with various conditions and many kinds of soils, and used them accordingly. These features at the farm level combined to compose the features of land use at the village level. At this level the pattern corresponded well with the natural or transportation conditions in each village as a whole. This was enabled by the dispersed land holding system which helped each farm to use various kinds of land resources.