The peasants on the not-so-remote Dutch island of Ameland modernized their farming very late. Why this delay? And how does this relate to the ideas of one of this year’s Riksbank prize winners, the convinced economic historian Joel Mokyr? Interestingly, agents of modernization, such as the Ameland (cooperative) dairy factory and the (government) extension on Ameland service, generated per farm but also provided ´actionable knowledge´ as part of the processes of producing dairy and providing agricultural counseling (graph). This totally fits into the Mokyr mold. Even then, humongous investments, a total overhaul of institutions and mentalities, and the better part of a century were needed to change peasant farms into modern high-productivity farms. In the process, the number of farms declined by over 90%. Mokyr is right when he stresses that a relentless focus on and measurement of the nature of the ´nuts and bolts´ (sometimes even literally), in combination with an equally relentless focus on using this information, is crucial. This, however, can take time. Lots of time. The dissemination of culture, techniques, and ideas is a slow network process. Mokyr is totally right about that, too. But it´s hard to understand this as a ´market´, as Mokyr does. It´s more like playing a game. Learning the rules of this game and setting up the board is a difficult, time-consuming process that requires people to act in tandem.
The roughly 220 farming families on Ameland were peasants in the sense of the Russian agronomist Chayanov. Hardly any wage labor was used in agriculture. Also, at least from 1686 onward up to the end of the 1920s, these farms were not consolidated into larger holdings. It is, hence, probable that, just like the Russian peasants, the amount of land used was adapted to the size of the family, but I still have no good source on this (Chayanov´s data on Russia are amazing). Also, on an island like Ameland the peasant ´family cycle´ has, at least up to 1830, to be adapted to an uncommonly large number of widows, possibly due to men dying at sea. But also to the widows staying on the island. Somehow, they could carve out a livelihood, partly based on farming, on Ameland.
Farms were small, generally ranging in size from 1 to 8 cows in combination with a sizable vegetable garden and possibly a limited amount of arable land. And access to the dunes. There, surprising amounts of eggs were gathered, and large numbers of rabbits could be hunted or, depending on the time, poached. Branches, twigs, and Arram grass (Ammophila arenaria) were collected. The dunes were also a kind of emergency grazing area for cows. Rope made from Arram grass and rabbit fur were exported. Just like, until roughly 1860, fish. But fisheries (whales, coastal fisheries) came into disarray during the 19th century. Also, in a long, arduous process, the government restricted access to the dunes (which were not part of the land of the Commons), to be able to protect the island from the sea. The crucial innovation enabling the government to finally do this was steel wire (especially after 1880, the first mention I encountered of wire being used on the island is 1862, the first mention of a Commons purchasing it is 1872).
One institution enabling the peasant families to survive were these Commons. Every one of the four villages had its own Commons. The rights to graze one cow on the common lands and to hay your hay lands would cost one roughly 75 cents (15 stuivers), which was used to cover the costs of managing the commons. There were some charges to pay for the bull, a cow herd, and land tax (since 1833), but these were low, too. On the mainland, only the right to graze a cow would cost you at thirty times this amount of money, or, when butter prices were high, sixty to eighty times. Fixed investments in the land – mainly the dikes which the hay lands but not the pastures (or the houses) from the sea were, up to the end of the 19th century, almost entirely non-monetary- The peasants themselves maintained and restored these dikes, each according to his meticulously kept obligations, connected to his or her rights in the Commons. Investments in the ´outerdyken´ and regularly flooded pastures (the ´grieën´) were basically absent.
Also, when it comes to using artificial fertilizers, purchasing fodder, establishing dairy factories, and carefully measuring the quality of milk, the Ameland peasants were late to the party. Clear but limited signs of modernization are visible after about 1895. But sustained improvements building on top of each other—this is where the ideas of Joel Mokyr come in—are only visible in the 1920s. After 1920, the number of cows per farm slowly but continuously increased, and the average fat content of milk slowly but continuously increased (even when still being the lowest of the entire province of Friesland). What changed? For one thing, the Commons were dissolved. However, they were succeeded by Water boards. These were, like the Commons, democratic institutions, even if voting rights were, in a non-linear way, favoring small owners, tied to land owned instead of to individuals (actually heads of households, including widows). As these Water boards were official public institutions based upon Roman law instead of the (extremely rare in the Netherlands!) common law Commons, they could raise much more money. Also, as there were (initially) two waterboards instead of four Commons, they were better able to handle problems related to the combined area of the Commons. One of the rules for successful management of Commons, which involves a layered structure when large areas are involved, was violated on Ameland and largely solved by the establishment of Waterboards. Many of the responsibilities of the Commons (roads, drainage) were transferred to the Water boards. One of the first activities of the boards was to build a dike around the south side of the western half of Ameland (1916-1928), sixty years after a comparable action on the neighboring island of Schiermonnikoog and centuries after the establishment of a dike on the neighboring island of Terschelling.
This enabled the enclosure of the hay lands, which consisted of roughly 7.000 parcels in a roughly 700-hectare area (yes, ten parcels per hectare). Aside: this was not caused by inheritances, etc., but a conscious policy to construct consistent grazing and haying rights. There were large differences in the quality of hay lands. Which meant that rights to land had to be standardized in one way or another. In this case by dividing rights into access to good and bad parcels. This makes sense in a peasant economy, not based on maximum productivity but upon household survival, including reproduction of the means of production, including houses, barns, furniture, clothing, tools and the like. To 19th and 20th-century modernizationists, it was an abhorrent and abject example of inefficient, low-productivity agriculture that had to be rooted out ASAP.
Around 1900, purchasing cooperatives and a cooperative dairy factory were established, too. The catholic church, important in the eastern part of the island, was one of the driving forces. The diary cooperative, quite uncharacteristically, became really successful only after 1910, and it was only after around 1920 that one of the hallmarks of diary factory production, scientific measurement of milk and the use of these measurements as an input in management, not just of the factory but also of the farms of the members, became prevalent. Even then, it was only after 1950, after a second (!) round of enclosures (´ruilverkaveling´), that the farms of Ameland developed into a ´normal´, limited number of specialized high productivity family farms. Over 90% of the farms disappeared in the process.
The point: it took roughly eighty years, a total overhaul of institutions, a government totally committed to the goal of agricultural productivity and believing in science (including engineering), the building of dikes, two rounds of enclosures, the establishment of agricultural factories to finally change the peasant agriculture of Ameland to specialized high productivity large scale commercial and science based agriculture of today. In a sense, it took even longer. In the French period (around 1810), the first government engineers appeared on the island. In the 1840s, they actually saved the island from disappearing into the waves by, among other actions, constructing a long dam perpendicular to the southern coast into the sea. Also, a severe flood in 1862 damaged the dikes around the hay lands of the small Commons of Ameland in a way that was irreparable for the members of the Commons, and the government had to step in. Also, I do not see how, at this point in time, existing infrastructure on Ameland, including the dikes, can be maintained without the multitude of tourists visiting the island. Modern economic growth is a complicated, multidimensional development. On Ameland, peasant agriculture in combination with successful Commons resisted the call of the growth-sirens for a long time – even when success was defined in another way than modern agronomists defined it.
The question remains: why did people modernize? Why did governments act, why did some farmers establish factories, why did agricultural councilors establish experimental plots, why did Water boards, consisting of peasant farmers, suddenly build expensive dikes, why did the catholic church push such ideas? Neither the dikes nor the experimental plots nor the measurements of fat content by the factories yielded any kind of direct profit for the people involved. Yes, many of these people were paid to do things like this. But why?. They were paid to invest in the foundations for investments that might raise productivity, even when the profitability of these last investments was not certain. People acted because there were ideas about modernization and modern agriculture. Continuous measurement of production and productivity enabled farm-level goal-oriented action. But the results of these actions were far from certain. Public investments by government and, more importantly, non-government Commons-like organizations and institutional change created an environment where at least some farmers could obtain a higher income because of such actions (as Chayanov argues, peasants strive for what´s nowadays called `mixed income´, not for profit). But what was in it for the other actors? There was a growth-wave. Many people took part. Mokyr clearly sees the importance of this and deserves the prize as he puts this to the fore in a forceful way. However, describing the development of this process as a market process is wrong. ´Zeitgeist´, reinforced by success and spreading like the flu? Yes. A market for all these people and institutions working in tandem? I don´t see it.
