Pro-environmental and health-promoting grounds for restitution of flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) cultivation

Abstract

The current state of the world's ecosystems requires many measures to restore opportunities, if not for their reconstruction, then to stop the rate of biodiversity loss. One of the areas where this should happen is industrial agriculture. In order to diversify the large-scale monoculture crops dominated by cereals and fodder crops, science and practice draw attention to the need to introduce the plants of smaller or marginal significance into cultivation. Flax (Linum usitatissimum L.) is a species with special properties and great utility from the ancient times to the present. Currently, Canada is the largest producer of flax in the world, while France, Belgium and the Netherlands in Europe. The aim of the work was to assess the state of its cultivation (area and volume of production) and determine the possibilities of restituting this species in Poland. The analysis of the available materials indicates that the largest areas of flax cultivation occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when flax competed with cotton as a raw material for the production of textile products. In the interwar period, Poland had a well-developed linen industry for flax processing. Large quantities of high-quality linseed oil were also produced. In the 1990s, the production of flax amounted to several hundred hectares, and after Poland's accession to the EU, the area of cultivation and production of oil flax increased. Bearing in mind the pro-environmental qualities of linen and linseed oil, there is a need to popularize this species and increase the cultivation area, for which the climatic and soil conditions in moderate climate are very favorable.