British Agricultural Revolution

One of the most important innovations of the British Agricultural Revolution was the development of the Norfolk four-course rotation, which greatly increased crop and livestock yields by improving soil fertility and reducing fallow.[6]

Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of dissimilar types of crops in the same area in sequential seasons to help restore plant nutrients and mitigate the build-up of pathogens and pests that often occurs when one plant species is continuously cropped. Rotation can also improve soil structure and fertility by alternating deep-rooted and shallow-rooted plants. Turnip roots, for example, can recover nutrients from deep under the soil. The Norfolk four-course system, as it is now known, rotates crops so that different crops are planted with the result that different kinds and quantities of nutrients are taken from the soil as the plants grow. An important feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labour at times when demand was not at peak levels.[9]

Planting cover crops such as turnips and clover was not permitted under the common field system because they interfered with access to the fields. Besides, other people's livestock could graze the turnips.[10]

During the Middle Ages, the open field system had initially used a two-field crop rotation system where one field was left fallow or turned into pasture for a time to try to recover some of its plant nutrients. Later they employed a three-year, three field crop rotation routine, with a different crop in each of two fields, e.g. oats, rye, wheat, and barley with the second field growing a legume like peas or beans, and the third field fallow. Normally from 10% to 30% of the arable land in a three crop rotation system is fallow. Each field was rotated into a different crop nearly every year. Over the following two centuries, the regular planting of legumes such as peas and beans in the fields that were previously fallow slowly restored the fertility of some croplands. The planting of legumes helped to increase plant growth in the empty field due to the ability of the bacteria on legume roots to fix nitrogen (N₂) from the air into the soil in a form that plants could use. Other crops that were occasionally grown were flax and members of the mustard family.

Convertible husbandry was the alternation of a field between pasture and grain. Because nitrogen builds up slowly over time in pasture, ploughing up pasture and planting grains resulted in high yields for a few years. A big disadvantage of convertible husbandry was the hard work in breaking up pastures and difficulty in establishing them. The significance of convertible husbandry is that it introduced pasture into the rotation.[11]

The farmers in Flanders (in parts of France and current day Belgium) discovered a still more effective four-field crop rotation system, using turnips and clover (a legume) as forage crops to replace the three-year crop rotation fallow year.

The four-field rotation system allowed farmers to restore soil fertility and restore some of the plant nutrients removed with the crops. Turnips first show up in the probate records in England as early as 1638 but were not widely used till about 1750. Fallow land was about 20% of the arable area in England in 1700 before turnips and clover were extensively grown in the 1830s. Guano and nitrates from South America were introduced in the mid-19th century and fallow steadily declined to reach only about 4% in 1900.[12] Ideally, wheat, barley, turnips and clover would be planted in that order in each field in successive years. The turnips helped keep the weeds down and were an excellent forage crop—ruminant animals could eat their tops and roots through a large part of the summer and winters. There was no need to let the soil lie fallow as clover would re-add nitrates (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure when it was ploughed under after one or two years. The addition of clover and turnips allowed more animals to be kept through the winter, which in turn produced more milk, cheese, meat and manure, which maintained soil fertility. This maintains a good amount of crops produced.

The mix of crops also changed: the area under wheat rose by 1870 to 3.5 million acres (1.4m ha), barley to 2.25m acres (0.9m ha) and oats less dramatically to 2.75m acres (1.1m ha), while rye dwindled to 60,000 acres (25,000 ha), less than a tenth of its late medieval peak. Grain yields benefited from new and better seed alongside improved rotation and fertility: wheat yields increased by a quarter in the 18th century[13] and nearly half in the 19th, averaging 30 bushels per acre (2,080 kg/ha) by the 1890s.

The Dutch acquired the iron-tipped, curved mouldboard, adjustable depth plough from the Chinese in the early 17th century. It had the advantage of being able to be pulled by one or two oxen compared to the six or eight needed by the heavy wheeled northern European plough. The Dutch plough was brought to Britain by Dutch contractors who were hired to drain East Anglian fens and Somerset moors. The plough was extremely successful on wet, boggy soil, but was soon used on ordinary land.[14][15]

British improvements included Joseph Foljambe's cast iron plough (patented 1730), which combined an earlier Dutch design with a number of innovations. Its fittings and coulter were made of iron and the mouldboard and share were covered with an iron plate, making it easier to pull and more controllable than previous ploughs. By the 1760s Foljambe was making large numbers of these ploughs in a factory outside of Rotherham, England, using standard patterns with interchangeable parts. The plough was easy for a blacksmith to make, but by the end of the 18th century it was being made in rural foundries.[15][16][17] By 1770 it was the cheapest and best plough available. It spread to Scotland, America, and France.[15]

The Columbian exchange brought many new foodstuffs from the Americas to Eurasia, most of which took decades or centuries to catch on. Arguably the most important of these was the potato. Potatoes yielded about three times the calories per acre of wheat or barley, due in large part to only taking 3–4 months to mature versus 10 months for wheat. On top of this, potatoes had higher nutritive value than wheat, could be grown in even fallow and nutrient-poor soil, did not require any special tools, and were considered fairly appetizing. According to Langer, a single acre of potatoes could feed a family of five or six, plus a cow, for the better part of a year, an unprecedented level of production. By 1715 the potato was widespread in the Low Countries, the Rhineland, Southwestern Germany, and Eastern France, but took longer to spread elsewhere.[18]

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, established in 1660, almost immediately championed the potato, stressing its value as a substitute for wheat (particularly since famine periods for wheat overlapped with bump periods for potatoes). The 1740 famines buttressed their case.[19] The mid 18th century was marked by rapid adoption of the potato by various European countries, especially in central Europe, as various wheat famines demonstrated its value. The potato was grown in Ireland, a property of the English crown and common source of food exports, since the early 17th century and quickly spread so that by the 18th century it had been firmly established as a staple food. It spread to England shortly after it popped up in Ireland, first being widely cultivated in Lancashire and around London, and by the mid-18th century it was esteemed and common. By the late 18th century, Sir Frederick Eden wrote that the potato had become "a constant standing dish, at every meal, breakfast excepted, at the tables of the Rich, as well as the Poor."[20]

While not as vital as the potato, maize also contributed to the boost of Western European agricultural productivity. Maize also had far higher per-acre productivity than wheat (about two and a half times),[21] grew at widely differing altitudes and in a variety of soils (though warmer climates were preferred), and unlike wheat it could be harvested in successive years from the same plot of land. It was often grown alongside potatoes, as maize plants required wide spacing. Maize was cultivated in Spain since 1525 and Italy since 1530, contributing to their growing populations in the early modern era as it became a dietary staple in the 17th century (in Italy it was often made into Polenta). It spread from northern Italy into Germany and beyond, becoming an important staple in the Habsburg monarchy (especially Hungary and Austria) by the late 17th century. Its spread started in southern France in 1565, and by the start of the 18th century, it was the main food source of central and southern French peasants (it was more popular as animal fodder in the north).[22]

Conjectural map of a mediaeval English manor. The part allocated to "common pasture" is shown in the north-east section, shaded green.

In Europe, agriculture was feudal from the Middle Ages. In the traditional open field system, many subsistence farmers cropped strips of land in large fields held in common and divided the produce. They typically worked under the auspices of the aristocracy or the Catholic Church, who owned much of the land.

As early as the 12th century, some fields in England tilled under the open field system were enclosed into individually owned fields. The Black Death from 1348 onward accelerated the break-up of the feudal system in England.[23] Many farms were bought by yeomen who enclosed their property and improved their use of the land. More secure control of the land allowed the owners to make innovations that improved their yields. Other husbandmen rented property they "share cropped" with the land owners. Many of these enclosures were accomplished by acts of Parliament in the 16th and 17th centuries.

The process of enclosing property accelerated in the 15th and 16th centuries. The more productive enclosed farms meant that fewer farmers were needed to work the same land, leaving many villagers without land and grazing rights. Many of them moved to the cities in search of work in the emerging factories of the Industrial Revolution. Others settled in the English colonies. English Poor Laws were enacted to help these newly poor.

Some practices of enclosure were denounced by the Church, and legislation was drawn up against it; but the large, enclosed fields were needed for the gains in agricultural productivity from the 16th to 18th centuries. This controversy led to a series of government acts, culminating in the General Enclosure Act of 1801 which sanctioned large-scale land reform.

The process of enclosure was largely complete by the end of the 18th century.

Regional markets were widespread by 1500 with about 800 locations in Britain. The most important development between the 16th century and the mid-19th century was the development of private marketing. By the 19th century, marketing was nationwide and the vast majority of agricultural production was for market rather than for the farmer and his family. The 16th-century market radius was about 10 miles, which could support a town of 10,000.[24]

The next stage of development was trading between markets, requiring merchants, credit and forward sales, knowledge of markets and pricing and of supply and demand in different markets. Eventually, the market evolved into a national one driven by London and other growing cities. By 1700, there was a national market for wheat.

Legislation regulating middlemen required registration, addressed weights and measures, fixing of prices and collection of tolls by the government. Market regulations were eased in 1663 when people were allowed some self-regulation to hold inventory, but it was forbidden to withhold commodities from the market in an effort to increase prices. In the late 18th century, the idea of self-regulation was gaining acceptance.[25]

The lack of internal tariffs, customs barriers and feudal tolls made Britain "the largest coherent market in Europe".[26]

High wagon transportation costs made it uneconomical to ship commodities very far outside the market radius by road, generally limiting shipment to less than 20 or 30 miles to market or to a navigable waterway. Water transport was, and in some cases still is, much more efficient than land transport. In the early 19th century it cost as much to transport a ton of freight 32 miles by wagon over an unimproved road as it did to ship it 3000 miles across the Atlantic.[27] A horse could pull at most one ton of freight on a Macadam road, which was multi-layer stone covered and crowned, with side drainage. But a single horse could pull a barge weighing over 30 tons.

Commerce was aided by the expansion of roads and inland waterways. Road transport capacity grew from threefold to fourfold from 1500 to 1700.[28][29]

Railroads would eventually reduce the cost of land transport by over 95%.

Another way to get more land was to convert some pasture land into arable land and recover fen land and some pastures. It is estimated that the amount of arable land in Britain grew by 10–30% through these land conversions.

The British Agricultural Revolution was aided by land maintenance advancements in Flanders and the Netherlands. Due to the large and dense population of Flanders and Holland, farmers there were forced to take maximum advantage of every bit of usable land; the country had become a pioneer in canal building, soil restoration and maintenance, soil drainage, and land reclamation technology. Dutch experts like Cornelius Vermuyden brought some of this technology to Britain.

Water-meadows were utilised in the late 16th to the 20th centuries and allowed earlier pasturing of livestock after they were wintered on hay. This increased livestock yields, giving more hides, meat, milk, and manure as well as better hay crops.

With the development of regional markets and eventually a national market, aided by improved transportation infrastructures, farmers were no longer dependent on their local market and were less subject to having to sell at low prices into an oversupplied local market and not being able to sell their surpluses to distant localities that were experiencing shortages. They also became less subject to price fixing regulations. Farming became a business rather than solely a means of subsistence.[30]

Under free-market capitalism, farmers had to remain competitive. To be successful, farmers had to become effective managers who incorporated the latest farming innovations in order to be low cost producers.

During the 18th century, a high share of farmers had the ability to basic numerical skills as well as the ability to read and write (literacy), both of which are skills that were far from widespread in the early modern period. This is unsurprising for countries such as England, where farmers developed particularly high human capital skills because of rapid occupational changes – they became a minority that produced the food for the majority of the population. However, the ‘farmer effect’ of high human capital among farmers applies both to the center and the periphery of Europe. One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that a constant amount of nutrition was almost always available to farmer families. They could feed themselves even during times of famine by increasing the share of their products that they consumed themselves instead of selling them on markets. There is a strong link between nutritional deprivation and cognitive abilities, therefore it seems likely that farmers were one of the groups of society that contributed significantly to the numeracy revolution achieved in Europe during the early modern era.[31][2]

In England, Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke introduced selective breeding as a scientific practice, mating together two animals with particularly desirable characteristics, and also using inbreeding or the mating of close relatives, such as father and daughter, or brother and sister, to stabilise certain qualities in order to reduce genetic diversity in desirable animal programmes from the mid-18th century. Arguably, Bakewell's most important breeding programme was with sheep. Using native stock, he was able to quickly select for large, yet fine-boned sheep, with long, lustrous wool. The Lincoln Longwool was improved by Bakewell, and in turn the Lincoln was used to develop the subsequent breed, named the New (or Dishley) Leicester. It was hornless and had a square, meaty body with straight top lines.[32]

Bakewell was also the first to breed cattle to be used primarily for beef. Previously, cattle were first and foremost kept for pulling ploughs as oxen or for dairy uses, with beef from surplus males as an additional bonus, but he crossed long-horned heifers and a Westmoreland bull to eventually create the Dishley Longhorn. As more and more farmers followed his lead, farm animals increased dramatically in size and quality. The average weight of a bull sold for slaughter at Smithfield was reported around 1700 as 370 pounds (170 kg), though this is considered a low estimate: by 1786, weights of 840 pounds (380 kg) were reported,[33][34] though other contemporary indicators suggest an increase of around a quarter over the intervening century.

In 1300, the average milk cow produced 100 gallons of milk annually. This figure rose throughout the early modern era. The average in 1400-1449 was 140; in 1450-1499 162; in 1550-1599 212; in 1600-1649 243; in 1650-1699 272; in 1700-1749 319; in 1750-1799 366; and in 1800-1849 420. Beef output per animal rose even faster, from 168 lbs in 1300, to 251 in 1450-1499, to 317 in 1550-1599, 356 in 1600-1649, 400 in 1650-1699, 449 in 1700-1749, 504 in 1750-1799, and 566 in 1800-1849.[35]

Before the introduction of the seed drill, the common practice was to plant seeds by broadcasting (evenly throwing) them across the ground by hand on the prepared soil and then lightly harrowing the soil to cover the seed. Seeds left on top of the ground were eaten by birds, insects, and mice. There was no control over spacing and seeds were planted too close together and too far apart. Alternatively, seeds could be laboriously planted one by one using a hoe and/or a shovel. Cutting down on wasted seed was important because the yield of seeds harvested to seeds planted at that time was around four or five.

The seed drill was introduced from China to Italy in the mid-16th century where it was patented by the Venetian Senate.[43] Jethro Tull invented an improved seed drill in 1701. It was a mechanical seeder which distributed seeds evenly across a plot of land and at the correct depth. Tull's seed drill was very expensive and fragile and therefore did not have much of an impact.[44] The technology to manufacture affordable and reliable machinery, including agricultural machinery, improved dramatically in the last half of the 19th century.[45]

• Robert C. Allen. "Tracking the Agricultural Revolution in England". Economic History Review (1999) 52#2 pp. 209–235. doi:10.1111/1468-0289.00123.
• Overton, Mark (1996b). "Re-establishing the English Agricultural Revolution". Agricultural History Review. 44 (1): 1–20. JSTOR 40275062.