The British Agricultural Revolution, or Second Agricultural Revolution, was an unprecedented increase in
agricultural
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created f ...
production in Britain arising from increases in labor and land productivity between the mid-17th and late 19th centuries. Agricultural output grew faster than the population over the hundred-year period ending in 1770, and thereafter productivity remained among the highest in the world. This increase in the food supply contributed to the rapid growth of population in
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
and
Wales
Wales ( ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by the Irish Sea to the north and west, England to the England–Wales border, east, the Bristol Channel to the south, and the Celtic ...
, from 5.5 million in 1700 to over 9 million by 1801, though domestic production gave way increasingly to food imports in the 19th century as the population almost quadrupled to over 35 million.
Using 1700 as a base year (=100), agricultural output per agricultural worker in Britain steadily increased from about 50 in 1500, to around 65 in 1550, to 90 in 1600, to over 100 by 1650, to over 150 by 1750, rapidly increasing to over 250 by 1850.
[Broadberry et al 2008, p. 52, figure 14.] The rise in productivity accelerated the decline of the agricultural share of the labour force, adding to the urban workforce on which
industrialization
Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an i ...
depended: the Agricultural Revolution has therefore been cited as a cause of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
.
However, historians continue to dispute when exactly such a "revolution" took place and of what it consisted. Rather than a single event,
G. E. Mingay states that there were a "profusion of agricultural revolutions, one for two centuries before 1650, another emphasising the century after 1650, a third for the period 1750–1780, and a fourth for the middle decades of the nineteenth century". This has led more recent historians to argue that any general statements about "the Agricultural Revolution" are difficult to sustain.
One important change in farming methods was the move in
crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, along with the pro ...
to
turnip
The turnip or white turnip ('' Brassica rapa'' subsp. ''rapa'') is a root vegetable commonly grown in temperate climates worldwide for its white, fleshy taproot. Small, tender varieties are grown for human consumption, while larger varieties a ...
s and
clover
Clovers, also called trefoils, are plants of the genus ''Trifolium'' (), consisting of about 300 species of flowering plants in the legume family Fabaceae originating in Europe. The genus has a cosmopolitan distribution with the highest diversit ...
in place of
fallow
Fallow is a farming technique in which arable land is left without sowing for one or more vegetative cycles. The goal of fallowing is to allow the land to recover and store Organic compound, organic matter while retaining moisture and disrupting ...
under the
Norfolk four-course system. Turnips can be grown in winter and are deep-rooted, allowing them to gather minerals unavailable to shallow-rooted crops. Clover
fixes nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form of fertiliser. This permitted the intensive arable cultivation of light soils on enclosed farms and provided fodder to support increased livestock numbers whose manure added further to soil fertility.
Term
Called "British", the term implies that the revolution began in Britain, not that it existed solely in Britain. Other countries in Europe
[ (including France,][ ]Prussia
Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
(Germany), and Russia), East Asia and North America followed suit in the next two centuries. The Second Agricultural Revolution was much like the Neolithic Revolution
The Neolithic Revolution, also known as the First Agricultural Revolution, was the wide-scale transition of many human cultures during the Neolithic period in Afro-Eurasia from a lifestyle of hunter-gatherer, hunting and gathering to one of a ...
in that it occurred in many regions across the world in a short span of time.
The British origins of the revolution is the view shared by the British historians. The Dutch historians disagree. In the Netherlands between 1500 and 1650, the agricultural output per labourer rose by 80% leading to over 60% decline in manpower engaged in agriculture by 1650. From 1500 to 1750, the Dutch were faster than Britain in reducing the agricultural sector of population. The Netherlands were called "school room," or "home" of the modern agricultural revolution. Notably, one of the innovations in the British Revolution was the "Dutch" light plough. English landowners and their agents who returned from exile in the Netherlands in the 17th century introduced Dutch methods and techniques.
The term "revolution" refers to increase in yields per land and labour. Innovations in agricultural technology and methods took place gradually rather than an abrupt sweeping alteration.
Major developments and innovations
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.
* The Dutch acquired the Chinese heavy, mould-board iron plough
A plough or ( US) plow (both pronounced ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden ...
so that it could be pulled with fewer oxen or horses.
* Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land", enclosing it, and by doing so depriving commoners of their traditional rights of access and usage. Agreements to enc ...
: 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 development is the alteration of landscape in any number of ways, such as:
* Changing landforms from a natural or semi-natural state for a purpose such as agriculture or housing
* Subdividing real estate into lots, typically for the purpo ...
, land drains and reclamation
* Increase in farm size
* Selective breeding
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant m ...
Crop rotation
;Notes to table
Yields have had the seed used to plant the crop subtracted to give net yields.
‡ Average annual growth rate of agricultural output is per agricultural worker.
Other authors offer different estimates. (1 bushel/acre = 0.06725 tonnes
The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1,000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton in the United States to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the s ...
/hectare
The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), that is, square metres (), and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. ...
)
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.
Crop rotation
Crop rotation is the practice of growing a series of different types of crops in the same area across a sequence of growing seasons. This practice reduces the reliance of crops on one set of nutrients, pest and weed pressure, along with the pro ...
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 occur 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. As it is now known, the Norfolk four-course system rotates crops so that different crops are planted, resulting in various kinds and quantities of nutrients being taken from the soil as the plants grow. An essential feature of the Norfolk four-field system was that it used labour at times when demand was not at peak levels.
Planting cover crop
In agriculture, cover crops are plants that are planted to ground cover, cover the soil rather than for the purpose of being harvested. Cover crops manage soil erosion, soil fertility, soil quality, water, weeds, Pest (organism), pests, diseases ...
s 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
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
, the open-field system
The open-field system was the prevalent Agriculture in the Middle Ages, agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each Manorialism, manor or village had two or thre ...
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
Arable land (from the , "able to be ploughed") is any land capable of being ploughed and used to grow crops.''Oxford English Dictionary'', "arable, ''adj''. and ''n.''" Oxford University Press (Oxford), 2013. Alternatively, for the purposes of a ...
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
Fertility in colloquial terms refers the ability to have offspring. In demographic contexts, fertility refers to the actual production of offspring, rather than the physical capability to reproduce, which is termed fecundity. The fertility rate ...
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
Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, ''Linum usitatissimum'', in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. In 2022, France produced 75% of t ...
and members of the mustard family
Brassicaceae () or (the older but equally valid) Cruciferae () is a medium-sized and economically important family of flowering plants commonly known as the mustards, the crucifers, or the cabbage family. Most are herbaceous plants, while some ar ...
.
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
Flanders ( or ; ) is the Dutch language, Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, la ...
(in parts of France
France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
and current day Belgium
Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
) 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 nitrate
Nitrate is a polyatomic ion with the chemical formula . salt (chemistry), Salts containing this ion are called nitrates. Nitrates are common components of fertilizers and explosives. Almost all inorganic nitrates are solubility, soluble in wa ...
s (nitrogen-containing salts) back to the soil. The clover made excellent pasture and hay fields as well as green manure
In agriculture, a green manure is a crop specifically cultivated to be incorporated into the soil while still green. Typically, the green manure's Biomass (ecology), biomass is incorporated with a plow or disk, as is often done with (brown) man ...
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 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 , 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 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
A plough or ( US) plow (both pronounced ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden ...
which was invented in Chinese Han dynasty
The Han dynasty was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China (202 BC9 AD, 25–220 AD) established by Liu Bang and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–206 BC ...
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 Anglia
East Anglia is an area of the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, with parts of Essex sometimes also included.
The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, ...
n fen
A fen is a type of peat-accumulating wetland fed by mineral-rich ground or surface water. It is one of the main types of wetland along with marshes, swamps, and bogs. Bogs and fens, both peat-forming ecosystems, are also known as mires ...
s and Somerset
Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...
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
Rotherham ( ) is a market town in South Yorkshire, England. It lies at the confluence of the River Rother, South Yorkshire, River Rother, from which the town gets its name, and the River Don, Yorkshire, River Don. It is the largest settlement ...
, 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, America, and France.
New crops
The Columbian exchange
The Columbian exchange, also known as the Columbian interchange, was the widespread transfer of plants, animals, and diseases between the New World (the Americas) in the Western Hemisphere, and the Old World (Afro-Eurasia) in the Eastern Hemis ...
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
The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...
. Potatoes yielded about three times the calories per acre of wheat or barley, mainly because it took 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 Low Countries (; ), historically also known as the Netherlands (), is a coastal lowland region in Northwestern Europe forming the lower Drainage basin, basin of the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta and consisting today of the three modern "Bene ...
, the Rhineland
The Rhineland ( ; ; ; ) is a loosely defined area of Western Germany along the Rhine, chiefly Middle Rhine, its middle section. It is the main industrial heartland of Germany because of its many factories, and it has historic ties to the Holy ...
, southwestern Germany, and eastern France, but took longer to spread elsewhere.
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
Bump or bumps may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Bump (dance), a dance from the 1970s disco era
* ''BUMP'' (comics), 2007-08 limited edition comic book series
Fictional characters
* Bobby Bumps, titular character of a series of American si ...
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
Maize (; ''Zea mays''), also known as corn in North American English, is a tall stout grass that produces cereal grain. It was domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 9,000 years ago from wild teosinte. Native American ...
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 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
Polenta (, ) is an Italian cuisine, Italian dish of boiled cornmeal that was historically made from other grains. It may be allowed to cool and solidify into a loaf that can be baked, fried or Grilling, grilled.
The variety of cereal used is ...
). It spread from northern Italy into Germany and beyond, becoming an important staple in the Habsburg monarchy
The Habsburg monarchy, also known as Habsburg Empire, or Habsburg Realm (), was the collection of empires, kingdoms, duchies, counties and other polities (composite monarchy) that were ruled by the House of Habsburg. From the 18th century it is ...
(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
In Europe, agriculture was feudal
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was a combination of legal, economic, military, cultural, and political customs that flourished in Middle Ages, medieval Europe from the 9th to 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of struc ...
from the Middle Ages. In the feudal open-field system
The open-field system was the prevalent Agriculture in the Middle Ages, agricultural system in much of Europe during the Middle Ages and lasted into the 20th century in Russia, Iran, and Turkey. Each Manorialism, manor or village had two or thre ...
, 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
Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocracy (class), aristocrats.
Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense Economy, economic, Politics, political, and soc ...
or the Catholic Church
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...
, 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
The Black Death was a bubonic plague pandemic that occurred in Europe from 1346 to 1353. It was one of the list of epidemics, most fatal pandemics in human history; as many as people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe's 14th century population. ...
from 1348 onward accelerated the break-up of the feudal system in England. Many farms were bought by yeomen
Yeoman is a noun originally referring either to one who owns and cultivates land or to the middle ranks of servants in an English royal or noble household. The term was first documented in mid-14th-century England. The 14th century witnessed ...
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 modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...
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
Grazing rights is the right of a user to allow their livestock to feed (graze) in a given area.
United States
Grazing rights have never been codified in United States law, because such common-law rights derive from the English concept of the ...
. Many of them moved to the cities in search of work in the emerging factories of the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
. Others settled in the English colonies. English Poor Laws
The English Poor Laws were a system of poor relief in England and Wales that developed out of the codification of late-medieval and Tudor-era laws in 1587–1598. The system continued until the modern welfare state emerged in the late 1940s.
En ...
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 Inclosure (Consolidation) Act 1801 which sanctioned large-scale land reform
Land reform (also known as agrarian reform) involves the changing of laws, regulations, or customs regarding land ownership, land use, and land transfers. The reforms may be initiated by governments, by interested groups, or by revolution.
Lan ...
. 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
In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them.
Th ...
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 infrastructures
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
Maritime transport (or ocean transport) or more generally waterborne transport, is the transport of people (passengers or goods (cargo) via waterways. Freight transport by watercraft has been widely used throughout recorded history, as it pr ...
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 3,000 miles across the Atlantic. A horse could pull at most one ton of freight on a macadam
Macadam is a type of road construction pioneered by Scottish engineer John Loudon McAdam , in which crushed stone is placed in shallow, convex layers and compacted thoroughly. A binding layer of stone dust (crushed stone from the original mat ...
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. Railroads would eventually reduce the cost of land transport by over 95%.
Land conversion, drainage and reclamation
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. With large and dense populations in 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
Canals or artificial waterways are waterways or engineered channels built for drainage management (e.g. flood control and irrigation) or for conveyancing water transport vehicles (e.g. water taxi). They carry free, calm surface ...
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.
Rise in domestic farmers
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.
Selective breeding of livestock
In England, Robert Bakewell and Thomas Coke introduced selective breeding
Selective breeding (also called artificial selection) is the process by which humans use animal breeding and plant breeding to selectively develop particular phenotypic traits (characteristics) by choosing which typically animal or plant m ...
as a scientific practice, mating together two animals with particularly desirable characteristics and also using inbreeding
Inbreeding is the production of offspring from the mating or breeding of individuals or organisms that are closely genetic distance, related genetically. By analogy, the term is used in human reproduction, but more commonly refers to the genet ...
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
Genetic diversity is the total number of genetic characteristics in the genetic makeup of a species. It ranges widely, from the number of species to differences within species, and can be correlated to the span of survival for a species. It is d ...
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 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 an additional bonus, but he crossed long-horned heifers and a Westmoreland bull to eventually create the Dishley Longhorn. As more farmers followed his lead, farm animals increased dramatically in size and quality. The average weight of a bull
A bull is an intact (i.e., not Castration, castrated) adult male of the species ''Bos taurus'' (cattle). More muscular and aggressive than the females of the same species (i.e. cows proper), bulls have long been an important symbol cattle in r ...
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.
19th century
Besides the organic fertilisers in manure, new fertilisers were slowly discovered. Massive sodium nitrate
Sodium nitrate is the chemical compound with the chemical formula, formula . This alkali metal nitrate salt (chemistry), salt is also known as Chile saltpeter (large deposits of which were historically mined in Chile) to distinguish it from ordi ...
(NaNO3) deposits found in the Atacama Desert
The Atacama Desert () is a desert plateau located on the Pacific Ocean, Pacific coast of South America, in the north of Chile. Stretching over a strip of land west of the Andes Mountains, it covers an area of , which increases to if the barre ...
, Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
, were brought under British financiers like John Thomas North
John Thomas North (30 January 1842 – 5 May 1896) was an English investor and businessman. North was born in Leeds, Yorkshire, the son of a coal merchant and a churchwarden. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to millwrights and engine ...
and imports were started. Chile was happy to allow the exports of these sodium nitrates by allowing the British to use their capital to develop the mining and imposing a hefty export tax to enrich their treasury. Massive deposits of sea bird guano
Guano (Spanish from ) is the accumulated excrement of seabirds or bats. Guano is a highly effective fertiliser due to the high content of nitrogen, phosphate, and potassium, all key nutrients essential for plant growth. Guano was also, to a le ...
(11–16% nitrogen, 8–12% phosphate
Phosphates are the naturally occurring form of the element phosphorus.
In chemistry, a phosphate is an anion, salt, functional group or ester derived from a phosphoric acid. It most commonly means orthophosphate, a derivative of orthop ...
, and 2–3% potassium
Potassium is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol K (from Neo-Latin ) and atomic number19. It is a silvery white metal that is soft enough to easily cut with a knife. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmospheric oxygen to ...
), were found and started to be imported after about 1830. Significant imports of potash
Potash ( ) includes various mined and manufactured salts that contain potassium in water- soluble form. obtained from the ashes of trees burned in opening new agricultural lands were imported.
By-products of the British meat industry
The meat industry are the people and companies engaged in modern industrialized livestock agriculture for the production, packing, preservation and marketing of meat (in contrast to dairy products, wool, etc.). In economics, the meat industry is ...
like bones from the knackers' yards were ground up or crushed and sold as fertiliser. By about 1840 about 30,000 tons of bones were being processed (worth about £150,000). An unusual alternative to bones was found to be the millions of tons of fossils called coprolite
A coprolite (also known as a coprolith) is fossilized feces. Coprolites are classified as trace fossils as opposed to body fossils, as they give evidence for the animal's behaviour (in this case, diet) rather than morphology. The name ...
s found in South East England
South East England is one of the nine official regions of England, regions of England that are in the ITL 1 statistical regions of England, top level category for Statistics, statistical purposes. It consists of the nine counties of england, ...
. When these were dissolved in sulphuric acid they yielded a high phosphate mixture (called " super phosphate") that plants could absorb readily and increased crop yields. Mining coprolite and processing it for fertiliser soon developed into a major industry—the first commercial fertiliser.
Higher yield per acre crops were planted as potatoes went from about 300,000 acres in 1800 to about 400,000 acres in 1850 with a further increase to about 500,000 in 1900. Labour productivity slowly increased at about 0.6% per year. With more capital invested, more organic and inorganic fertilisers, and better crop yields increased the food grown at about 0.5% per year—not enough to keep up with population growth.
Great Britain contained about 10.8 million people in 1801, 20.7 million in 1851 and 37.1 million by 1901. This corresponds to an annual population growth rate of 1.3% in 1801-1851 and 1.2% in 1851–1901, twice the rate of agricultural output growth. In addition to land for cultivation there was also a demand for pasture land to support more livestock. The growth of arable acreage slowed from the 1830s and went into reverse from the 1870s in the face of cheaper grain imports, and wheat acreage nearly halved from 1870 to 1900.
The recovery of food imports after the Napoleonic Wars
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Napoleonic Wars
, partof = the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
, image = Napoleonic Wars (revision).jpg
, caption = Left to right, top to bottom:Battl ...
(1803–1815) and the resumption of American trade following the War of 1812
The War of 1812 was fought by the United States and its allies against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, United Kingdom and its allies in North America. It began when the United States United States declaration of war on the Uni ...
(1812–1815) led to the enactment in 1815 of the Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word ''corn'' in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. The la ...
(protective tariffs) to protect cereal
A cereal is a grass cultivated for its edible grain. Cereals are the world's largest crops, and are therefore staple foods. They include rice, wheat, rye, oats, barley, millet, and maize ( Corn). Edible grains from other plant families, ...
grain producers in Britain against foreign competition. These laws were removed in 1846 after the onset of the Great Irish Famine
The Great Famine, also known as the Great Hunger ( ), the Famine and the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of mass starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and had a major impact o ...
in which a potato blight ruined most of the Irish potato crop and brought famine to the Irish people from 1846 to 1850. Though the blight also struck Scotland, Wales, England, and much of continental Europe, its effect there was far less severe since potatoes constituted a much smaller percentage of the diet than in Ireland. Hundreds of thousands died in the famine, and millions more emigrated to England, Wales, Scotland, Canada, Australia, Europe, and the United States, reducing the population from about 8.5 million in 1845 to 4.3 million by 1921.
Between 1873 and 1879 British agriculture suffered from wet summers that damaged grain crops. Cattle farmers were hit by foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) or hoof-and-mouth disease (HMD) is an infectious disease, infectious and sometimes fatal virus (biology), viral disease that primarily affects even-toed ungulates, including domestic and wild Bovidae, bovids. The vir ...
, and sheep farmers by liver rot. The poor harvests, however, masked a greater threat to British agriculture: growing imports of foodstuffs from abroad. The development of the steam ship and the development of extensive railway networks in Britain and in the United States allowed U.S. farmers with much larger and more productive farms to export hard grain to Britain at a price that undercut the British farmers. At the same time, large amounts of cheap corned beef started to arrive from Argentina, and the opening of the Suez Canal
The Suez Canal (; , ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, Indo-Mediterranean, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia (and by extension, the Sinai Peninsula from the rest ...
in 1869 and the development of refrigerator ships ( reefers) in about 1880 opened the British market to cheap meat and wool from Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina.
The Long Depression
The Long Depression was a worldwide price and economic recession, beginning in Panic of 1873, 1873 and running either through March 1879, or 1899, depending on the metrics used. It was most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been e ...
was a worldwide economic recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a period of broad decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be tr ...
that began in 1873 and ended around 1896. It hit the agricultural sector hard and was the most severe in Europe and the United States, which had been experiencing strong economic growth fuelled by the Second Industrial Revolution
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, was a phase of rapid Discovery (observation), scientific discovery, standardisation, mass production and industrialisation from the late 19th century into the early ...
in the decade following the American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and the Confederate States of A ...
. By 1900, half the meat eaten in Britain came from abroad, and tropical fruits such as bananas were also being imported on the refrigerator ships.
Seed planting
Before the introduction of the seed drill
file:7263 Canterbury Agricultural College farm.jpg, Filling a feed-box of a seed drill, Lincoln University (New Zealand), Canterbury Agricultural College farm, 1948
A seed drill is a device used in agriculture that sowing, sows seeds for crops by ...
, 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. 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 expensive and fragile and therefore did not have much of an impact. The technology to manufacture affordable and reliable machinery, including agricultural machinery
Agricultural machinery relates to the machine (mechanical), mechanical structures and devices used in farming or other agriculture. There are list of agricultural machinery, many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractor ...
, improved dramatically in the last half of the 19th century.
Significance
The Agricultural Revolution was part of a long process of improvement, but sound advice on farming began to appear in England in the mid-17th century, from writers such as Samuel Hartlib
Samuel Hartlib or Hartlieb (c. 1600 – 10 March 1662)
M. Greengrass, "Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–1662)", ''Oxford D ...
, Walter Blith and others, and the overall agricultural productivity of Britain started to grow significantly only in the 18th century. It is estimated that total agricultural output grew 2.7-fold between 1700 and 1870 and output per worker at a similar rate. Despite its name, the Agricultural Revolution in Britain did not result in overall productivity per hectare of agricultural area as high as in China, where intensive cultivation (including multiple annual cropping in many areas) had been practiced for many centuries.
The Agricultural Revolution in Britain proved to be a major turning point in history, allowing the population to far exceed earlier peaks and sustain the country's rise to industrial pre-eminence. 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 new lands and advances in transportation, refrigeration, and other technologies.
The Agricultural Revolution in other countries was a turning point too. In the agrarian societies, four families produced enough food for five families, that is for themselves and one more family. Not much manpower was available for non-agricultural activity. In the course of the revolution, one family began to produce enough food for five families. Much manpower was liberated from agriculture and became available for industry. Thus the Agricultural Revolution made possible the Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
:
Unprecedented population growth followed and even more explosive was the growth of the non-agricultural sector. Barrington Moore stressed the "importance of getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity" in the formation of the working class. First, "rural proletariat" appeared; later, this mass moved to cities causing unprecedented urbanization
Urbanization (or urbanisation in British English) is the population shift from Rural area, rural to urban areas, the corresponding decrease in the proportion of people living in rural areas, and the ways in which societies adapt to this change. ...
. When the percentage of manpower engaged in agriculture declined from 80 to 60, occurred great social revolutions or reformations (revolution from above). The result was not liberte, egalite, fraternite; often the result was the opposite, with stronger autocracy. But in all cases, the power shifted from land owners to industrial entrepreneurs or central-planning states, marking "revolutionary break with the past." The ten-millennia Agrarian Age was succeeded by the Industrial Age.
Today, agriculture accounts for 5% of the world product. But these 5% is the basis holding the rest 95% like a reverse pyramid. The Second Agricultural Revolution created this basis and made possible our industry and other sectors of the modern civilization. Without this basis all this civilization, with all its technological progress, would collapse. "No modern development made us independent from Earth Mother, or Pachamama
Pachamama is a goddess revered by the Indigenous peoples of the Andes. In Inca mythology she is an " Earth Mother" type goddess, Dransart, Penny. (1992) "Pachamama: The Inka Earth Mother of the Long Sweeping Garment." ''Dress and Gender: Makin ...
that feeds, as the Inca
The Inca Empire, officially known as the Realm of the Four Parts (, ), was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. The administrative, political, and military center of the empire was in the city of Cusco. The History of the Incas, Inca ...
put it."[Max Ostrovsky, ''The Hyperbola of the World Order'', Lanham: University Press of America, 2007, p 126.]
See also
* Agriculture in the United Kingdom#History
* Scottish Agricultural Revolution
The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland was a series of changes in agricultural practice that began in the 17th century and continued in the 19th century. They began with the improvement of Scottish Lowlands farmland and the beginning of a transfo ...
References
Sources
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Further reading
* Ang, James B., Rajabrata Banerjee, and Jakob B. Madsen. "Innovation and productivity advances in British agriculture: 1620–1850". ''Southern Economic Journal'' 80.1 (2013): 162–186.
* Campbell, Bruce M. S., and Mark Overton. "A new perspective on medieval and early modern agriculture: six centuries of Norfolk farming c. 1250-c. 1850." ''Past and Present'' (1993): 38–105. .
* Clark, Gregory. "Too much revolution: Agriculture in the industrial revolution, 1700–1860". In ''The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective'' (2nd ed. 1999) pp. 206–240.
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* Mingay, Gordon E. "The 'Agricultural Revolution' in English History: A Reconsideration". ''Agricultural History'' (1963): 123–133. .
* Mingay, Gordon E. (1977). ''The Agricultural Revolution: Changes in Agriculture, 1650–1880''. (Documents in Economic History.) Adam & Charles Black. .
*Niermeier-Dohoney, Justin. (2018).
A Vital Matter: Alchemy, Cornucopianism, and Agricultural Improvement in Seventeenth-Century England
'' The University of Chicago.
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Historiography
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External links
"Agricultural Revolution in England 1500–1850"
��'' BBC History''
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Agricultural revolutions