Students:Day Four - nature conservation & sustainable agriculture: Difference between revisions

The next stop was at "Lueneburger Heide" or Lueneburg Heath for a guided walk with heath ranger, Jan Brockmann. Jan explained the history of the heath and how it had been turned from thick forest into heath land in the first millenium by new immigrants, left to afforest again after the soil fertility gave out, and then repopulated in the Middle Ages and turned into heath again by the felling once more of the regrown forests for use as fuel. As the soil was of poor quality, however, the farmers developed a system of herding sheep for their manure and using the dung to fertilise a small area of land for food crops. Life was hard but manageable, but became less so with the first stage of globalisation in the 19th century following the industrial revolution when cheap imports of merino wool from New Zealand undercut the wool produced in the heath, and imported sugarcane destroyed the local honey industry. The heath became quickly depopulated as a result, but the farming practices are maintained to this day, i.e. sheep herding, to ensure the heath remains in its current state.