Nature and Agriculture in Itu: Ilidro Carlos da Silva conception’s (1860 - 1864)

Abstract

The scope of this dissertation is the result of a need of the time, is the time when the concerns about sustainable development or the impacts of human actions become increasingly present in scientific debates, and consequently in the political initiatives. Our proposal is the need for understanding the ideas that were developed in Itu on the nature of the end of the century XIX. As sources, we used three newspapers edited since 1860 – O Agricultor Paulista, O 25 de Março and Correio Paulistano. The first two were published on the initiative of Carlos Ilidro da Silva, a farmer interested in reforming the methods of cultivation practiced so far. In the last newspaper, published in São Paulo, the farmer went on to write a biweekly column in which discoursed on the same practices that should will be overcome and the means to do so. Drawing on his ideas we tried to identify how nature and agriculture were concurrent, to understand one face of a broader movement lived in the country, namely the growth of a sensitivity to the natural world in the nineteenth century.