The British Agricultural Revolution was the result of the complex interaction of social, economic and farming technological changes. Major developments and innovations include: •
Norfolk four-course crop rotation: fodder crops, particularly turnips and clover, replaced leaving the land fallow. • Farm machinery: Adaptation of the
heavy, mould-board iron plough so that it could be pulled with fewer oxen or horses; the
seed drill •
Selective breeding •
Enclosure: the removal of common rights to establish exclusive ownership of land • Development of a national market free of tariffs, tolls and customs barriers • Transportation infrastructures, such as improved roads, canals, and later, railways •
Land conversion,
land drains and
reclamation • Increase in farms
Crop rotation ‡ Average annual growth rate of agricultural output is per agricultural worker. Yields have had the seed used to plant the crop subtracted to give net yields. Other authors offer different estimates. (1 bushel/acre = 0.06725
tonnes/
hectare) 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. 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. 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 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 because of the ability of the bacteria on legume roots to
fix nitrogen 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. 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. 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 the 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 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. The mix of crops also changed: the area under wheat rose by 1870 to , barley to and oats less dramatically to , while rye dwindled to , less than a tenth of its late medieval peak. Grain yields benefitted from new and better seed alongside improved rotation and fertility: wheat yields increased by a quarter in the 18th century and nearly half in the 19th, averaging 30 bushels per acre (2,080 kg/ha) by the 1890s.
Dutch and Rotherham swing (wheel-less) plough The Dutch acquired the
iron-tipped, curved
mouldboard, adjustable depth
plough which was invented during the Chinese
Han dynasty, 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 as well. British improvements included
Joseph Foljambe's cast iron plough (patented 1730), which combined an earlier Dutch design with several 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, 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. By 1770 it was the cheapest and best plough available. It spread to Scotland, North America, and France. 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
bumper periods for potatoes). The 1740 famines buttressed their case. 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 took hold 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." 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), 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 require 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).
Enclosure . 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 feudal
open-field system, peasant
farmers were assigned individual narrow strips of land in large fields which were used for growing crops. For the right to work this land they would pay a percentage of the yield to the
aristocracy or the
Catholic Church, who owned the land. A separate section of land in the same area would be "held in common" as grazing pasture. Periodically the grazing land would be rotated with the crop land to allow the land to recover. 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. 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. The
English Poor Laws were a reaction to manage these newly poor, by institutionalising measures of support and control, following similar medieval laws dealing with beggars and vagrants. 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
Inclosure (Consolidation) Act 1801 which sanctioned large-scale
land reform. The process of enclosure was largely complete by the end of the 18th century.
Development of a national market 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 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. 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. The lack of internal tariffs, customs barriers and feudal tolls made Britain "the largest coherent market in Europe".
Transportation infrastructure 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 indeed still is) much more energy-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 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. A horse could pull at most one ton of freight on the best type of improved roads (
Macadam roads). Comparatively, a single horse could pull a barge weighing over 30 tons down a canal or river; a sailing ship required no horses at all. Commerce was aided by the expansion of roads and inland waterways. Road transport capacity grew from threefold to fourfold from 1500 to 1700, and many
canals were built during a period known as
Canal Mania, which enabled efficient water transport to more markets. Starting in the 1820s,
railways were developed, which eventually reduced shipping costs by more than 90% compared to wagon transport.
Land conversion, drainage and reclamation Beyond increased productivity per acre, various methods of creating more usable farmland were found. The simplest was to convert pastoral land for crops. Another way was improve land previously unfit for agriculture; the main way of doing this was through
land drainage infrastructure. Across the Channel,
Dutch and
Flemish engineers had become experts in
canal building, land drainage, and
land reclamation due to the low-lying nature of their land and the consequent need to maximise its agricultural utility. Dutch engineers like
Cornelius Vermuyden brought this technology to England, where it was used to massively improve drainage and create areas of new agricultural land. The
Bedford Level Corporation was formed in 1663 and drained more than 95,000 acres in
The Fens, making it suitable for agriculture. Nationally, the
Commissions of Sewers Act 1708 revitalised the
governance of land drainage in England and Wales, making land reclamation a national project. Land drainage projects increased the amount of arable land in Great Britain by 10 to 30 per cent. Animal husbandry technology also improved.
Water-meadows were introduced in the late 16th century, and allowed livestock to return to the pasture earlier in the spring. This increased livestock yields, giving more hides, meat, milk, and manure as well as better hay crops.
Subsistence to business With the development of larger regional and eventually national markets, aided by improved transportation infrastructure, 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; instead, they could have their products shipped to
London and other urban markets to sell at a better price to city-dwellers; this also reduced the effect of
cartel-like behaviour and local regulations which fixed prices.
Subsistence agriculture declined as more farmers started to participate in commercial agriculture.
Selective breeding of livestock In England,
Robert Bakewell and
Thomas Coke systematised
selective breeding, managing the reproduction of animal stock to reinforce desirable traits. 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, the
Dishley Leicester. It was
hornless and had a square, meaty body with straight top lines. 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 a secondary product, but he cross-bred long-horned heifers and a Westmoreland bull to eventually create the
Dishley Longhorn. As knowledge of Bakewell's innovation spread, farm animals increased dramatically in size and quality. The average weight of a
bull sold for slaughter at Smithfield was reported around 1700 as , though this is considered a low estimate; by 1786, weights of were reported, 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. By 1800, this figure rose to 566 gallons. ==History==