Published May 23, 2008
by iris_author
Dr. Verena Winiwarter’s talk at York’s History Department on May 7, covered the long history of human interactions with soil in Europe. Verena is both a scientist and a historian. She is a professor in Environmental History in the Social Ecology department at the University of Vienna. The history of human impacts on soil, which have mainly been fertilization and harvesting, has been largely overlooked. However, the past has definite implications for sustainable agriculture in the future. 
Traditionally, before large-scale industrial fertilization became an integral part of how we practice agriculture, overall crop productivity was much lower than it is now, but the crop yield relative to the energy input was actually several-fold greater than the energy invested through farming. This means that production efficiency was actually much greater in the past. Modern farming practices persist because the final crop output is much higher than for past traditional farming practices, and the manual labor required is lower. This is because modern technology allows for a lot more energy input in the forms of machinery and heavy fertilization with fossil fuels. Therefore, modern practices allow farmers to be competitive in their crop yields, but this is not without ecological consequences for the soils and surrounding ecosystems.
Modern fertilization practices not only deplete the soil when crops are harvested, draining a non-renewable resource, but excess nitrogen running off into groundwater, lakes, and rivers can cause excessive plant growth in aquatic ecosystems, sometimes to the point of collapse. Excess nitrogen might also cause plant community shifts and make it easier for non-native species to invade, as nitrogen-loving plants take advantage of it.
What’s the solution? In Europe, traditional farming practices (some of which are still used in places where heavy machinery can’t go, like in the mountains) were optimized by the farmers and land-owners, who kept very specific records about how to maximize crop yields on their particular piece of land. They took into account variables like the soil type, nutrient content, rainfall, and annual temperatures. This is opposed to our current farming practices of heavily fertilizing all croplands, regardless of their ecology.
Of course we will never return completely to the traditional farming practices of pre-industrial Europe, but we can certainly learn from them. Taking into account the subtle differences in the nature and ecology of farmlands might help us increase the efficiency of modern agriculture, while saving both energy and the integrity of our ecosystems.
So, why should students of science attend history lectures? The reason is that examining our past can help us build a more sustainable future.
Posted in: Blogs
All scientists, natural and physical, should at least read texts on the history of science to grasp how their fields have developed and been shaped by the historical processes around them. This would go a long way to dispelling unique claims to objective truth that create glaring blind spots and unseemly contempt for non-scientists.
For biologists, natural history and evolutionary biology are a must. One of the most profoundly disturbing phenomena I have encountered in my studies is the lack of this thorough grounding among many new biology students. This is particularly pronounced in “pre-meds” whose biological training is often shallow and focused solely on the human body, as opposed to its origins in the vast tapestry of life that has evolved on our planet.
There was a neat article on growing the zero-mile diet in this weekend’s Globe and Mail.
Part of the reason given to do so is due to carbon guilt, which is directly related to what you are talking about. They also talk about GMOs.
yeah that is quiet right for the science students to explore the history of science so that they can understand that the stuff they read in the books had meant alot to the people working on the theories and how the politics and other factors may have affect the outcome of the theories they have been studying in the lecture rooms. I myself a science student was fascinated with level of politics involve in the making science what we call science today after taking some Science and Technology Studies (STS) and history of science sources at york. http://www.yorku.ca/sts/