The paper argues for an ecologically-informed agricultural history. It introduces a model-based approach for the analysis of biophysical relations in local agricultural production systems. Data from the Franciscean Cadastre and statistical sources are used to quantify material and energy exchange processes between society and nature, and their development over time for two Austrian case studies. It will be demonstrated that livestock played an integrating and multifunctional role in optimizing land use at the local level in 19th century agriculture. The fossil fuel based industrialization of agriculture in the 20th Century resulted in the disintegration of local land use systems, turning them into throughput systems with high inputs and outputs. On the one hand, this allowed for tremendous increases in area and labour productivity but, on the other hand, significantly decreased the energy efficiency of agriculture
