Early History
About 90% of all farming soil in Denmark was cooperative from 1300, as the Black Death depopulated the rural parts of the country. Then, the inhabitants of a Danish village would work together, forming Landsbyfællesskaber (village communes). To distribute land fairly between farmers, the land was normally distributed between all farmers in a village with each of them owning a strip of land on every field. Re-allocation of land took place if the size of the individual families changed strongly. In this system, it was virtually impossible to only work individually, since the plots of land might have the full length of the field, but only be a few meters wide. A second characteristic was that all farms were located close together and near the church, with the result that fields far from the village were often poorly utilized.
Read more about this topic: Danish Cooperative Movement
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