Grenzboden

In agricultural science and environmental history, boundary soil is a cultivated soil whose productivity is so low due to climatic or pedological conditions that it was or is only temporarily used for agriculture and the people living on it could only feed relatively poorly.

In the history of Central European settlement, the most fertile areas were settled first. When the population grew rapidly in the High Middle Ages and the climate improved as a result of the Medieval Warm Period , the less suitable border soils were also settled and used for agriculture as part of the state development . In addition to the low mountain ranges, this also included the heathland areas of northern Central Europe or marshland in damp floodplains. When the climate deteriorated again and the population decreased due to the Black Death , the cultivation of the border soils was given up again and settlements became partly deserted . In the modern age, the conditions improved through renewed global warming and especially through the use of fertilizers and productive varieties so that the medieval border soils can now be used productively for agriculture.

In overpopulated countries, a development similar to that in the European Middle Ages has taken place since the 20th century; Here too people are forced to switch to less productive soils in order to be able to farm and survive. These are particularly susceptible to crop failures, which (in the Middle Ages as well as today) can increasingly lead to famine . The use of border soils for agriculture deprives them of other uses, which in particular leads to the receding of the forest . While reforestation is usually possible in temperate latitudes, this poses a considerable problem in the case of tropical rainforests . The Lüneburg Heath is also an example of a formerly overused boundary soil whose natural ecosystem could not regenerate. Today, however, it is consciously preserved and cared for in its human character.