南西ドイツLimburg盆地の一村落・Nauheimにおける農業的土地利用の変化

抄録

This study deals with the change of agricultural land use after World War II, including its areal patterns, in a peasant village in the Southwest Germany. In the Limburg Basin there had been three field system (zelgensystem) until the end of 1950's (Fig. 3). This traditional field pattern and the land use have changed greatly in the 1960's and the 1970's. The major change and the characteristics of land use today are summerized in the following : 1. the disappearance of three field system and the increase of difference in the land use composition (or crop rotation) among farmers, 2. the extension of cereal producing area and the reduction of root crops, potatoes, and feed crops, 3. the extension of pasture or meadow land on steep slopes and the land use change from pasture or meadow to arable land in the alluvial land along broocklet, 4. the inexistence of social fallow (Fig. 5).
The disappearance of three field system are explained, first of all, by the land consolidation in 1960. But more basically, the specialization of farms enlarged the difference in the land use composition. It resulted in the disappearance of the traditional crop rotation, or three field system. In this village there was only one type of farming, mixed farming. This type of farming has changed into three types of farming Type A : traditional mixed farming, Type B : type of hog raising with cereal production, Type C : crop growing without live-stocks (Fig. 9). Thus, the land use of each peasant farm became different, reflecting the farm management.
The inclease in cereal producing area is explained by the enlargement of farm size in the 1960's (Table 3, Fig. 7, 8), the specialization to farming Types B and C in the 1970's, and the mechanization of farming in the 1960's and 70's.
The mechanization and the specialization have resulted in the extension of pasture or meadow land on steep slopes, on the one hand, and the land use change from pasture to arable land on the other hand.
The inexistence of social fallow, which is seen in peasant area in the Southwest Germany, is explained by the smooth processes of land transfer from the peasant, who would reduce farm size, to the farmers, who would enlarge farm size.
In the age of traditional land use, each peasant held the different kinds of land in a similar composition with the other. Consequently, they could use the lands in the similar way and adopt a similar mixed farming. At a village level, the patterns of land use, which peasants made with the same norm, reflected physical conditions and distance from the village (Fig. 3). At a farm level, however, land use composition and crop rotation today are different among peasants, because of the differentiation of farming purposes. Consequently, the land use patterns at a village level reflect less the physical conditions and distance from the village. In other words, actual patterns of land use have become less coincided with the potential in the village as a whole (Fig. 10).