In the US we have the opposite situation - vast forests that used to be farmland. In New England you can be hiking through a dense forest, far from any town, and come across stone walls that farmers built from the stones they dug up while clearing their fields.
Interesting, any idea why that is so? In some other places, it is often the reverse, i.e. forests chopped down and converted to farmland. Is it the way it is in New England because farms were abandoned, forests were restored, or some other reason?
The New England farmers depleted their soil. When the Civil War came around and the Maine soldiers saw Ohio and what farming looks like with fertile soil, no rocks, longer growing seasons, and no -20F winters there was a mass exodus.
In many cases it's likely due to early farming efforts that were shifted (in the generic unit sense) to superior farm land. Outcompeted, basically.
Part of my family were Appalachian farmers that owned sizable amounts of relatively low-value farm land. The land is difficult to work, almost nothing is flat or ideal. The soil is ok, but only for a select few things. The climate is mediocre for farming in many parts of the greater region.
As US farming industrialized, it concentrated, moved toward far superior farming land regions. If you were a small farmer in much of New England, you lost that economic battle.
I ran across this in Georgia once. A forest where there was once a rice field (during slavery days). I thought the terrain seemed a little different than surrounding areas and started researching. If you leave an area idle for long enough nature will take over.
If you remove a piece of common land then it must be replaced with something of an equal size. It also requires Secretary of State approval for lots of things relating to commons.
