Why agricultural revolution

By an estimated 6. However, questions have been raised about the nature, and particularly the timing, of the agricultural revolution. The first phase, completed by c. As a result of these changes less land needed to be left fallow, additional animal feedstuffs were grown, and greater quantities and quality of manure became available. During the second phase, lasting from around to , demand increased rapidly.

In this period the slack in the agricultural economy which had been partly taken up by grain exports disappeared and by the early 19th cent. The reorganization of the land through enclosure and the gradual growth of larger farms, brought a slow rise in productivity, and a growing trend towards regional specialization. Norfolk farmers had pioneered the cultivation of clover in England, but it was only after that the principal benefits of the new crop were felt. The third phase, beginning in about , and sometimes called the second agricultural revolution, saw for the first time farmers using substantial inputs purchased off their farms, in the form of fertilizers for their land and artificial feedstuffs for their animals.

Together with the introduction of improved methods of drainage, the results were seen in the era of high farming between the s and s, which soon gave way to a severe and prolonged agricultural depression. In Scotland the agricultural revolution took a rather different form. A rapid move towards single tenancies and production for the market was partly stimulated by the pace of population growth, and particularly of urbanization notably Glasgow and Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th cent.

The result, in the second half of the 18th cent. Many of the existing farmers adapted to the new demands upon them, so that there was no Lowland equivalent of the Highland clearances.

Overall the result was a radical departure from the patterns of the past in the last quarter of the 18th cent. It was a structural change, and not simply an intensification of existing trends, since it produced a dramatic increase in crop yields, allowing Scottish cultivators to catch up on English levels of output within a few decades.

In England and Wales, the term is also used for the process that ended the ancient system of arable farming in open fields. Under enclosure, such land was fenced enclosed and deeded or entitled to one or more owners. The process of enclosure became a widespread feature of the English agricultural landscape during the 16th century. By the 19th century, unenclosed commons were largely restricted to large areas of rough pasture in mountainous places and relatively small residual parcels of land in the lowlands.

Enclosure could be accomplished by buying the ground rights and all common rights to accomplish exclusive rights of use, which increased the value of the land. The other method was by passing laws causing or forcing enclosure, such as parliamentary enclosure.

The latter process of enclosure was sometimes accompanied by force, resistance, and bloodshed, and remains among the most controversial areas of agricultural and economic history in England.

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 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. However, 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 , which sanctioned large-scale land reform. The Act of was one of many parliamentary enclosures that consolidated strips in the open fields into more compact units and enclosed much of the remaining pasture commons or wastes.

Parliamentary enclosures usually provided commoners with some other land in compensation for the loss of common rights, although often of poor quality and limited extent. Voluntary enclosure was also frequent at that time. Conjectural map of a medieval English manor. William R. After , the problem of untended farmland disappeared with the rising population.

There was a desire for more arable land along with antagonism toward the tenant-graziers with their flocks and herds. Increased demand along with a scarcity of tillable land caused rents to rise dramatically in the s to mid-century. There were popular efforts to remove old enclosures and much legislation of the s and s concerns this shift.

Angry tenants impatient to reclaim pastures for tillage were illegally destroying enclosures. The primary benefits to large land holders came from increased value of their own land, not from expropriation.

Smaller holders could sell their land to larger ones for a higher price post enclosure. Protests against parliamentary enclosures continued, sometimes also in Parliament, frequently in the villages affected, and sometimes as organized mass revolts. Enclosed land was twice as valuable, a price that could be sustained by its higher productivity. While many villagers received plots in the newly enclosed manor, for small landholders this compensation was not always enough to offset the costs of enclosure and fencing.

Many historians believe that enclosure was an important factor in the reduction of small landholders in England as compared to the Continent, although others believe that this process began earlier. Enclosure faced a great deal of popular resistance because of its effects on the household economies of smallholders and landless laborers. Common rights had included not just the right of cattle or sheep grazing, but also the grazing of geese, foraging for pigs, gleaning, berrying, and fuel gathering.

During the period of parliamentary enclosures, employment in agriculture did not fall, but failed to keep pace with the growing population. Consequently, large numbers of people left rural areas to move into the cities where they became laborers in the Industrial Revolution. Enclosure is considered one of the causes of the British Agricultural Revolution. Enclosed land was under control of the farmer, who was free to adopt better farming practices.

There was widespread agreement in contemporary accounts that profit making opportunities were better with enclosed land. Following enclosure, crop yields and livestock output increased while at the same time productivity increased enough to create a surplus of labor.

The increased labor supply is considered one of the factors facilitating the Industrial Revolution. The increase in agricultural production and technological advancements during the Agricultural Revolution contributed to unprecedented population growth and new agricultural practices, triggering such phenomena as rural-to-urban migration, development of a coherent and loosely regulated agricultural market, and emergence of capitalist farmers.

Although evidence-based advice on farming began to appear in England in the midth century, the overall agricultural productivity of Britain grew significantly only later. It is estimated that total agricultural output grew 2. Even as late as , British yields were rivaled only by Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Interestingly, the Agricultural Revolution in Britain did not result in overall productivity per hectare of agriculture that would rival productivity in China, where intensive cultivation including multiple annual cropping in many areas had been practiced for many centuries.

Towards the end of the 19th century, the substantial gains in British agricultural productivity were rapidly offset by competition from cheaper imports, made possible by the exploitation of colonies and advances in transportation, refrigeration, and other technologies. The increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in England and Wales, from 5. As enclosure deprived many of access to land or left farmers with plots too small and of poor quality, increasing numbers of workers had no choice but migrate to the city.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, however, rural flight occurred in mostly localized regions. Pre-industrial societies did not experience large rural-urban migration flows, primarily due to the inability of cities to support large populations. Lack of large employment industries, high urban mortality, and low food supplies all served as checks keeping pre-industrial cities much smaller than their modern counterparts. While the improved agricultural productivity freed up workers to other sectors of the economy, it took decades of the Industrial Revolution and industrial development to trigger a truly mass rural-to-urban labor migration.

As food supplies increased and stabilized and industrialized centers moved into place, cities began to support larger populations, sparking the beginning of rural flight on a massive scale. Drawing of a horse-powered thresher from a French dictionary published in The development and advancement of tools and machines decreased the demand for rural labor.

That together with increasingly restricted access to land forced many rural workers to migrate to cities, eventually supplying the labor demand created by the Industrial Revolution. Markets were widespread by These were regulated and not free. The most important development between the 16th century and the midth 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, 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. The next stage of development was trading between markets, requiring merchants, credit and forward sales, and knowledge of markets and pricing as well as of supply and demand in different markets. Eventually the market evolved into a national one driven by London and other growing cities.

By , there was a national market for wheat. Legislation regulating middlemen required registration, and addressed weights and measures, fixing of prices, and collection of tolls by the government. Market regulations were eased in , 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. Commerce was aided by the expansion of roads and inland waterways. Road transport capacity grew from threefold to fourfold from to By 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, miles across the Atlantic.

With the development of regional markets and eventually a national market aided by improved transportation infrastructures, farmers were no longer dependent on their local markets 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. Under free market capitalism, farmers had to remain competitive. To be successful, they had to become effective managers who incorporated the latest farming innovations in order to be low-cost producers.

Privacy Policy. Finally, Bakewell's New Leicester sheep was a success, but his Longhorn cattle were not. It seems that only the Collings brothers, who developed the shorthorn cattle breed, can escape criticism.

Despite this evidence, the myths associated with these individuals have proved extremely difficult to dislodge from literature not directed at a specialist historical audience. One obvious reason behind the argument is the fact that an expanding population from this time on was largely fed by home production. In English population stood at about 5. It had probably reached this level before, in the Roman period, then around , and again in But at each of these periods the population ceased to grow, essentially because agriculture could not respond to the pressure of feeding extra people.

Contrary to expectation, however, population grew to unprecedented levels after , reaching Low-intensity agricultural system based on fishing and fowling was replaced by a high-intensity system based on arable crops.

One reason output grew was through new farming systems involving the rotation of turnips and clover, although these were part of the general intensification of agricultural production, with more food being produced from the same area of land. Intensity was also increased by land reclamation, especially the draining of the fenlands of eastern England, from the 17th century onwards, when a low-intensity agricultural system based on fishing and fowling was replaced by a high-intensity system based on arable crops.

Other examples include the clearing of woodland and the reclamation of upland pastures. This extent of this activity is impossible to quantify, but may have affected some 30 per cent of the agricultural area of England, from the midth to the midth centuries. The balance between arable and permanent pasture also changed, so that more productive arable land was replacing permanent pasture. This does not mean that fodder supplies were falling, quite the reverse, for the loss of permanent pasture was made good by new fodder crops, especially turnips and clover, in arable rotations.

Not only did these crops result in an increase in fodder yields, but they were also instrumental in the reclamation of many lowland heaths from rough pasture to productive arable farms.

This was because one of the purposes of the fallow was to clear the land of weeds by ploughing, but a crop of turnips sown in rows could be hoed to remove weeds while it was growing. Thus fallow land was about 20 per cent of the arable area in England in , and steadily declined to reach only 4 per cent in One of the earliest pieces of evidence we have, concerning the cultivation of turnips for animal fodder, is the inventory taken for probate purposes, in , of the possessions of a Mr Pope, of Burgh Castle in Suffolk.

But turnips were not common until the midth century, and not widespread as part of the new Norfolk four-course rotation until the 19th century. Cereal yields also increased. Wheat yields increased by about a quarter between and , and then by about a half between and , and the most recent research emphasises the early 19th century as the period of crucial change. The key to increasing cereal yields was nitrogen, which we now know was the 'limiting factor' in determining cereal yields before about Existing stocks were exploited, for example, by ploughing up permanent pasture to grow cereals.