Johann Kohl, a prolific German travel writer and geographer, had a gift for clever predictions. In 1841, he foresaw cities that would grow concentrically and eventually spawn skyscrapers and underground shopping malls. A few years later, he envisaged Denmark, which he toured extensively in 1845, becoming “a land where not milk and honey, but milk and butter is flowing in abundance, and which may rival Ireland and Holland.” How right he would prove to be!1
The success of Danish agriculture, based on the export of high-quality produce and mediated through a bottom-up rural cooperative movement founded principally on excellent butter and pork, is a key element in the historiography of European agriculture. The strategy of specializing in the export of income-elastic items paid dividends for several decades, until World War I and tariff protection presented new challenges. In this traditional version of events, Danish farmers rose to the top...