Cronon Ch 7 A World of Fields and Fences ISS 310 People and Environment Prof Alan Rudy 1 31 02 1 Main Points What is he talking about Why Fields and Fences Nature Society Politics Economics Then Nature Forestry Now Social Nature Agriculture Hmmm am I imposing this on the text is it there already Does it help to understand a book to impose order on it that may or may not have been what the author intended Maize Both Indians and English grew corn What was different Spatially in communities and in fields Temporally seasonally re use property year round ownership rather than seasonal use Mammals Both consumed grazing animals What was different Spatially in communities and in fields wild Temporally seasonally re use property year round ownership rather than use after killing Mammals ag and food Greatest mammalian differentiation grazing mammals hunting wild deer and moose rather than growing cattle oxen horses swine sheep and goats Mammals and Money Most reliable source of income with a minimum of labor locally salted to Europe or shipped to Caribbean plantations Regular complaints of Indian theft of livestock but its not theft under usufruct This kind of property relies on FENCES Cronon suggests that w o livestock colonists might have been limited to Indian scale ecological effects and usufruct based natural resource relations Fences Commons and Mammals However grazing livestock in the commons meant that damage done by English livestock to unfenced Indian lands legally necessitated payment of damages FUNNY but always on English legal terms Indians had to capture marauding animals ALIVE and HOLD them HOW w o fences Fences Commons and Mammals II The long run effect is that Indians were forced to develop fenced agriculture even when the English had to build the fences at first though Indians then had to tend for them See sidewalks in the 20th C they put in the sidewalks but I have to keep them clear and repair them when the city s trees break the concrete Three little piggies SWINE Reproduced really fast will eat virtually anything can be turned out to the woods and fend for themselves Swine pops get so high weed pest animals they could be killed if caught in fields by English not Indian farmers Eventually open season on feral pigs repealed recalled round and round finally had to be stied and some wolves Wolves bounties set a price for wild animals too little enforcement labor difficult to figure out who pays and whether anyone has paid before Wolves became a reason to drain and clearing swamps WHAT Entire ecological communities were thus threatened because they represented an annoyance and prejudice to the town both by the miring of cattle and sheltering of wolves and vermin 133 Wolves and workers Whereas most livestock in England had been watched over by individual herders labor was scarce enough in New England that only the most valuable animals could generally be guarded Labor Labor Labor and the Law Either fences had to be built and maintained often w regulations about such things or the agricultural damaged by semi domesticated privately owned animals had to be dealt with AGAIN BECAUSE OF THE SHORTAGE OF LABOR LLL and the Law II The regulations necessitated enforcement folks going around checking to make sure people kept their fences in good repair large animals can of course damage them at will so that lazy farmers with bad fences couldn t make illegitimate claims Now is this productive labor Enforcement of fence viability to protect use of the commons by private individuals Did the Indians have these issues Key Quote about agriculture mammals space and property Through the agency of the fence viewers and the formal litigation of the courts towns took an increasing responsibility not only for enforcing the abstract boundaries between adjacent tracts of real estate but for guaranteeing that those boundaries were marked by the physical presence of fences 135 More on quote Private property generates abstract plots which have to be made real by legislative juridical action and real boundary markers whether fences or other ways THIS IS BECAUSE PRIVATE PROPERTY IS NOT REAL NATURAL IT IS A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS SOCIETY AND NATURE WHICH EXISTS IN SOME PLACES AND TIMES AND NOT IN OTHERS We make it real by acting as if it always has been so but now you know it hasn t always been so More quotes Fences thus marked off not only the map of a settlement s property rights but its economic activities and economic relationships as well At the center of a family s holdings was its house lot n earby were the outbuildings where animals spent their winters Feeding animals in the winter necessitated reserving large tracts of land for mowing all other lands were committed to grazing including upland woodlots where families cut their fuel and lumber 137 138 Another quote Gender Early land divisions had been done communally Later divisions were generally made through the abstract mechanism of land speculation ignored both the ecological characteristics of a given tract of land and its intended agricultural 138 Animals plows and weeds Grazing facilitated the introduction of European grasses weeds woody thorn bearing plants etc adapted to the harsh requirements of grazing Weeds grow rapidly germinate easily and attack both ag and wild lands changing the opportunity structure for indigenous plants making some of them pests And we ve not even mentioned the plow which tore up whole ecosystems or over extended use soil depletion or erosion all tied to ag mammals and private property Soil Compaction Soil compaction 1 2 3 4 5 6 harden reduce oxygen curtail root growth exacerbate toxic chemical production residues reduce carrying capacity for moisture and increased erosion Soil Erosion Erosion watershed changes 1 2 3 4 5 6 filling in ponds and lakes changing top soil sedimentation rates during annual floods streams and small rivers dried up shipping lanes had to be dredged or warfs extended shoreline grasslands became shifting dunes and overgrazed small islands disappeared Soil Exhaustion and Conclusion Soil Exhaustion A maize monoculture w o legumes B cattle graze unharvested plant material C abandoned maize fields grazed rather than fallowed and D uncollected manure tried fish ran out due to dams ashes deplete forests for soil oops AGAIN NATURE SOILS MAMMALS PESTS WATER IS NOT AT FAULT IT S ALL ABOUT HOW WE ORGANIZE OUR SIDE