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from some 92 m
2
of cropland, pasture and woodland to only 20 for every thousand
inhabitants, thus illustrating the role played by the advancement of organic agri-
cultures for urban growth.
2.7 Nature-Society Interaction Between a Malthusian Trap
and a Smithian Response
To what extent could the development of global market networks have increased
opportunities to improve prevailing land-use systems? This question involves, of
course, the de
ning feature in what William Parker and Jan De Vries have labelled
a Smithian-type of growth.
67
David Grigg has described the socio-metabolic way of
achieving this improvement, characterizing market specialization as a way of taking
advantage of the
of different soils or regions according
to their agronomic aptitudes and limiting factors.
68
Market diversi
'
ecological optimum
'
cation and
specialization meant that these regional
'
ecological optimums
'
could be exploited,
'
could be overcome through imports. Economic history provides many examples of
the link between resource endowment and trade patterns pointed out by the
Heckscher-Ohlin model, such as vineyard or olive oil specialization in the Medi-
terranean regions.
69
However, if we adopt an ecological-economic perspective we can easily see that
market networks might also become a double-edged sword. For example, in the
abovementioned local west-Mediterranean case study we found a high energy
return on energy inputs of 1.67 attained in mid-19th century Catalonia (Spain);
nonetheless, energy ef
'
while simultaneously other local agro-ecological constraints or
Liebig minimums
ciency could only have been maintained if agricultural
landscapes were kept poly-cultural and combined with some amount of woodland
or brushwood. The
nal energy balance depended on certain key factors, for
example a great deal of branches pruned from the vineyards or olive trees were used
as fuel, thus serving as a substitute when there was a reduction of
rewood supplies,
following the loss of woodland due to the growing plantations of wood crops. This
was probably the case while the agrarian system remained poly-cultural and vine-
growing was a partial specialization that coexisted with many other land usages in a
diverse agrarian mosaic. But if increase in demand for wine triggered a complete
regional specialization in a single export cash-crop, as was the case during the
infestation of the French vines by the Phylloxera plague between 1867 and 1890, it
would have led to a shortage in livestock and manure. In such circumstances, the
pruning of vineyards and other wood crops would have been used as a poor
67
Parker and Jones (
1975
) and De Vries (
2001
).
68
Grigg (
1982
).
69
Pamuk and Williamson (
2000
), Pinilla and Ayuda (
2007
) and Badia and Tello (
2014
).
