Danish Cooperative Movement - The Enclosure Movement

The Enclosure Movement

This all changed in the enclosure movement between 1750 and 1800, which aimed to reunite fields and award them to one owner only. Any farmer would normally be awarded a coherent piece of land and perhaps an additional piece of forest. In many villages, farmers were either forced or strongly encouraged to tear down their homes and rebuild them in the middle of their new fields with the intention that this would give them easier access to every part of the field, enabling them to utilize the land more effectively. These events are known as Landboreformerne (the agricultural reforms) or Udskiftningen (the parcellation), and were instigated at the initiative of the Danish Crown to raise production. For the next century, a standard village would be composed of a series of farms, many located a distance from each other, each family working for itself producing grain and raising a few animals.

After the Second War of Schleswig in 1864, two new movements hit Denmark. One was a successful attempt to reclaim moors in central and western Jutland for farming; mostly sandy land abandoned in the 14th century as a result of the Black Plague, but in many cases good for potatoes. This movement was initiated by Hedeselskabet (the Heath Association). Equally important was an influx to the world market of grain from the Russian provinces Ukraine and Poland, resulting in a sharp drop in price. This affected the income of many Danish farmers and the result was a change in production; from grain to dairy products and meat. When a farmer couldn't sell his grain, he fed it to his cows and pigs.