Agate presents its current favorite.
Within our collections, numerous illustrations or photographs deserve to be exhibited for their aesthetic quality or originality. Today, schoolteachers on a tour...
Forestry tour by student teachers from the High School (École Normale, in French) of Chambéry in the forests of Saint-Hugon (commune of Avillard, Savoie, 17th July 1909). Photograph: Paul Mougin.
Back in 1923, staff at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Central Agricultural Machinery Testing Station (SEMA) were designing and testing innovative tools, such as this retro-force implement carrier. Designed to carry and operate various implements (plows, seeders, harrows, etc.), it illustrates the ingenuity of the era in making farm work easier.
In 1946, cows seem to have found their place among the neatly aligned rows of this Belgian orchard. This photograph, taken from Edmond Van Cauwenberghe’s work Cherries: Standardization and Cultivation, illustrates—long before the term became widespread—the principles of agroforestry: fruit trees for production, and animals to maintain and fertilize the soil. A natural coexistence that, nearly eighty years later, continues to inspire resilient agricultural systems.