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Echoes of the past: legacy effects in Danish agriculture and their role in sustainable land use
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DOI：10.1007/s13593-026-01137-3.png)
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Abstract
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Agricultural expansion, intensification, and specialization improved human well-being over centuries, but they also contributed to current sustainability challenges. While historical transitions in agricultural production systems have significantly shaped present-day land-use patterns, their long-term legacy effects remain underexplored in sustainability research. Addressing this gap, our study provides a novel and comprehensive analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of agricultural land-use transitions in Denmark from 1861 to 1907, compared to recent times. We developed a method to trace and map the trends and patterns of transitions and investigate how historical changes in agricultural land management influence contemporary land-use patterns in Denmark, providing insights relevant to sustainability transitions more broadly. Using detailed parish-level agricultural statistics, we identified archetypes of historical agricultural systems based on dominant production types. We then assessed legacy effects by linking these past system archetypes to present-day land-use patterns using random forest regression and correlation analysis, while controlling for soil quality, population density, and market accessibility. We define land-use legacies as enduring impacts of historical agricultural system characteristics that continue to shape present-day land-use patterns. Our findings reveal positive correlations between historical and present indicators of feed crop yields and livestock densities (cattle and pigs), showing strong regional continuity, influencing modern agricultural patterns, and confirming the persistence of land-use legacies in Denmark. A major historical transition from mixed and plant-based systems to specialized livestock-intensive systems is confirmed by negative correlations and regional differences in crop production. These findings demonstrate that historical agricultural practices exert a long-lasting influence on current land use. Recognizing such legacy effects is critical for designing adaptive, regionally tailored policies and management strategies that support sustainable food system transitions. More broadly, our study contributes to international debates on path dependence, resilience, and transformation in agri-food systems, offering lessons that extend beyond the Danish case.
Keywords:
Agricultural systems
Historical land use
Archetypes
Land-use change
Pathways
Sustainable transitions
Landscape ecology
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