Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T01:04:14.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Institutionalisation of Knowledge-based Growth: the Case of the Dutch-Frisian Dairy Sector (1895–1950)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 September 2018

MERIJN KNIBBE  and
MARIJN MOLEMA
MERIJN KNIBBE
Affiliation:
Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences and Fryske Akademy/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and [email protected]
MARIJN MOLEMA
Affiliation:
Fryske Akademy/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract:

This article explores the outlines of an ‘agrarian-industrial knowledge society’ that developed from about 1895. Farmers, breeders, experts and leaders of dairy companies worked in close cooperation to increase the fat percentages in milk. The challenge was to measure these percentages on the farm, and process the information in a systematic way. Feedback mechanisms resulted in the selection of productive cows, because the fat content of milk is highly inheritable through the male as well as the female line. Data gathered from dairy companies and herd books in the Netherlands has uncovered considerable geographical differences in this process of knowledge-based growth. Focusing on Friesland, a Dutch province with a rich tradition of dairy farming, the importance of institutions is illustrated. A dairy counsellor, societies for milk measurement and cattle examination as well as price systems introduced by dairy companies advanced the biological quality of cows.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , October 2018 , pp. 217 - 235
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adrichem Boogaert, D. H. 1971. De ontwikkeling van de rundveehouderij in deze eeuw: Een historisch overzicht over de periode tot 1970 (The Hague).Google Scholar
Ashton, E. D. 1956. Milk and Butterfat Recording: A World Survey (Reading).Google Scholar
Atkins, P. 2010. Liquid Materialities: A History of Milk, Science and the Law (Farnham).Google Scholar
Auderset, J., Bächi, B. and Moser, P. 2012. ‘Die agrarisch-industrielle Wissensgesellschaft im 19./20. Jahrhundert: Akteure, Diskurse, Praktiken’, in Brodbeck, B., Ineichen, M. and Schibli, T., eds., Geschichte im virtuellen Archiv (Baden), pp. 21–38.Google Scholar
Beltrán, F. J. 2012. ‘Commons, social capital, and the emergence of agricultural cooperatives in early twentieth-century Spain’, European Review of Economic History, 16:4, 511–28.Google Scholar
Bieleman, J. 2002. Five Centuries of Farming: A Short History of Dutch Agriculture, 1500–2000 (Wageningen).Google Scholar
Bieleman, J. 2009. ‘The Emergence of Mechanized Dairying in the Northern Netherlands, and Particularly in the Provinces of Drenthe and Friesland’, in Segers, Y., Bieleman, J. and Buyst, E., eds, Exploring the Food Chain: Food Production and Food Processing in Western Europe, 1850–1990 (Turnhout), pp. 17–48.Google Scholar
Croesen, V. R. I. J. 1932. Geschiedenis van de ontwikkeling van de Nederlandsche zuivelbereiding in het laatst van de negentiende en het begin van de twintigste eeuw (The Hague).Google Scholar
Dijkstra, J. M. 1934. Een beschrijving van het verband, dat tusschen landbouw en veeteelt in Friesland en de fabrieksmatige zuivelbereiding in hare verschillende vormen bestaat (Leeuwarden).Google Scholar
El-Shimy, S. A. F. 1956. The Heritability of Milk Yield and Fat Percentage in the Frisian Cattle in the Province of Friesland (The Hague).Google Scholar
Flückiger, D. 2013. ‘Mediators between the Industrial State and Agriculture: The Social Profile and Professional Activities of Agronomists in Switserland, 1871–2007’, in Moser, P. and Varley, T., eds, Integration through Subordination: The Politics of Agricultural Modernisation in Industrial Europe (Turnhout), pp. 267–88.Google Scholar
Giraudeau, M. 2017. ‘The farm as an accounting laboratory: an essay on the history of accounting and agriculture’, Accounting History Review, 27:2, 201–15.Google Scholar
Harwood, J. 2005. Technology's Dilemma: Agricultural Colleges between Science and Practice in Germany, 1860–1934 (Oxford).Google Scholar
Hernández Adell, I. and Pujol-Andreu, J. 2016. ‘Economic growth and biological innovation: the development of the European dairy sector, 1865–1940’, Rural History, 27:2, 187–212.Google Scholar
Henriksen, I., McLaughlin, E. and Sharp, P. 2015. ‘Contracts and cooperation: the relative failure of the Irish dairy industry in the late nineteenth century reconsidered’, European Review of Economic History, 19:4, 412–31.Google Scholar
Hoefman, R. 2017. ‘“Melkvet leveren is vooral vetter voeren”: De Boerderij’ (21 September), <https://www.boerderij.nl/Rundveehouderij/Achtergrond/2017/9/Meer-melkvet-leveren-is-vooral-vetter-voeren-185920E/>[2nd June 2018].[2nd+June+2018].>Google Scholar
Knibbe, M. 1993. Agriculture in the Netherlands, 1851–1950: Production and Institutional Change (Amsterdam).Google Scholar
Knibbe, M. 1998. ‘De Nederlandse landbouw tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 111:1, 75–94.Google Scholar
Knibbe, M. 2007. ‘De hoofdelijke beschikbaarheid van voedsel en de levensstandaard in Nederland, 1807–1913’, TSEG/Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 4:4, 71–107.Google Scholar
Lampe, M. and Sharp, P. 2017. ‘A quest for useful knowledge: the early development of agricultural accounting in Denmark and Northern Germany’, Accounting History Review, 27:1, 73–99.Google Scholar
Lankveld, J. 2009. ‘Melkinrichtingen in Arnhem (1879/2003): De Koninklijke herkomst van de Nederlandse zuivelindustrie in de Kerkstraat’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen: Historisch Jaarboek voor Gelderland, 225–73.Google Scholar
Liberg, A. H. J. 1954. Gemiddelde uitkomsten van een aantal groepen bedrijven over 1950/51 en 1951/52 (Wageningen).Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. 2004. The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Oxford).Google Scholar
Mokyr, J. 2016. A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Oxford).Google Scholar
Molema, M. 2016. ‘Lessons learned: organizing knowledge in the Friesian dairy cluster (c. 1885–1904)’, TSEG/Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History, 13:4, 67–90.Google Scholar
Molema, M. 2017. ‘Collective organization of knowledge in the early phase of the Dutch- Friesian dairy industry (c. 1880–1914), Historia Agraria, 73: 91–118.Google Scholar
Omstead, A. L. and Rhodes, P. 2002. ‘The Red Queen and the Hard Reds: productivity growth in American wheat, 1800–1940’, The Journal of Economic History, 62:4, 929–66.Google Scholar
Orland, B. 2003. ‘Turbo-Cows. Producing a Competitive Animal in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth centuries’, in Schrepfer, S., and Scranton, P., eds, Industrializing Organisms. Introducing Evolutionary History (London), pp. 167–89.Google Scholar
Politiek, R. 1957. De invloed van erfelijkheid en milieu op de samenstelling van de melk bij Friese koeien en de praktische mogelijkheid van selectie op het eiwitgehalte (Drachten).Google Scholar
Mahlerwein, G. 2016. Grundzüge der Agrargeschichte. Band 3: Die Moderne (1880–2010) (Cologne, Weimar and Vienna).Google Scholar
Muilwijk, E. van. 1951. De preferente zwartbonte N.R.S.-stieren (The Hague).Google Scholar
Oosterwijk, T. H. 1989. Honderd jaar Zuivelindustrie in Oosterwolde (Oosterwolde).Google Scholar
Provinciale Commissie voor de Veefokkerij in Friesland. 1949. Preferente Stieren in Friesland 1910–1949 (Leeuwarden).Google Scholar
Ruttan, V. W. and Hayami, Y. 1984. Toward a Theory of Induced Institutional Innovation, Discussion Paper 200, Center for Economic Research. Department of Economics, University of Minnesota (Minneapolis).Google Scholar
Theunissen, B. 2008. ‘Breeding without Mendelism: theory and practice of dairy cattle breeding in the Netherlands, 1900–1950’, Journal of the History of Biology, 41: 637–76.Google Scholar
Uekötter, F. 2010. Die Wahrheit ist auf dem Feld: Eine Wissensgeschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft (Göttingen).Google Scholar
Veraart, F. 2018. ‘Agriculture and Nutrition: The End of Hunger’, in Lintsen, H. et al., eds, Well-being and Sustainability in the Netherlands, 1850–2050 (Cham), pp. 259–92.Google Scholar
Vivier, N., ed. 2008. The State and Rural Societies: Policy and Education in Europe 1750– 2000 (Turnhout).Google Scholar
Wiel, K. van der. 2011. De Agrarische geschiedenis van Oostelijk West-Friesland, 1880– 1930. Deel 2: Veehouderij (Zwolle).Google Scholar
Wiersma, J. 1959. Erf en Wereld: Over de Agrarische toestand in Friesland na 1870, de Doorbraak der Cooperatieve gedachte, de Opkomst van de Friese landbouwcooperatie en haar Ontwikkeling tot in onze tijd (Drachten).Google Scholar
Zanden, J. L. van. 1986. De economische ontwikkeling van de Nederlandse landbouw in de negentiende eeuw, 1800–1914 (Wageningen).Google Scholar
Zwart, W. Th. 1968. Tachtig jaar: Een speurtocht door het Friesch rundvee-stamboek en aanverwante organisaties (Drachten).Google Scholar