Agriculture in the Middle Ages

Most of the people living on the manor were peasant farmers or serfs who grew crops for themselves, and either labored for the lord and church or paid rent for their land.

Barley and wheat were the most important crops in most European regions; oats and rye were also grown, along with a variety of vegetables and fruits.

[1] Thereafter, the lands and people of the former western Roman Empire would be divided among different ethnic groups, whose rule was often ephemeral and constantly in flux.

Summer temperatures in Europe dropped as much as 2.5 °C (4.5 °F) and the sky was dimmed from volcanic dust in the atmosphere for 18 months, sufficient to cause crop failures and famine.

The Late Antique Little Ice Age preceded, and may have influenced, a number of disruptive events, including pandemics, human migration, and political turmoil.

The plague may have killed up to 25 percent of the people of the eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire and a similar percentage in western and northern Europe.

"In western Europe, then, we seem to see the effect of a release from the pressure of the Roman imperial market, army and taxation, and a return to farming based more on local needs.

"[15] The population declines of the 6th century, and, thus, a shortage of labor may have facilitated greater freedom among rural people who were either slaves or had been bound to the land under Roman law.

Early in the Middle Ages the agricultural history of the Eastern Roman Empire differed from that of western Europe.

The crops introduced by the Arabs included sugar cane, rice, hard wheat (durum), citrus, cotton, and figs.

"[19] Some scholars have questioned how much of the Arab (or Muslim) Agricultural Revolution was unique, and how much was a revival and expansion of technology developed in the Middle East during the centuries of Roman rule.

Whether credit of invention belongs mostly to the people of the Middle East during the Roman Empire or to the arrival of the Arabs, "the Iberian landscape changed profoundly" beginning in the 8th century.

[20] Gradually, the Roman system of villas and agricultural estates using partly slave labor was replaced by manorialism and serfdom.

Historian Peter Sarris has identified the characteristics of feudal society in sixth century Italy, and even earlier in the Byzantine Empire and Egypt.

The medieval population was divided into three groups: 'those who pray' (clergy), 'those who fight' (knights, soldiers, aristocrats), and 'those who work' (peasants).

[24] The serf and farmer supported with labor and taxes the clergy who prayed and the noble lords, knights, and warriors who fought.

Thus, the European countryside became a patchwork of small, semi-autonomous fiefdoms of lords and clergy ruling over a populace mostly of farmers, some relatively prosperous, some possessing land, and some landless.

In the aftermath of the Black Death, land was abundant and labor was scarce and the rigid relationships among farmers, the church, and the nobility changed.

This individualistic field system was found in eastern and southwestern England, Normandy and Brittany in France, and scattered throughout Europe.

In a survey of seven English counties in 1279, perhaps typical of Europe as a whole, 46 percent of farmers held less than 10 acres (4.0 ha), which was insufficient land to support a family.

[42] In the eighth through 11th century, in northern France, the most important crops were (in approximate order) rye (Secale cereale), bread wheat, barley, and, oats (Avena sativa).

[43] Rye is more winter-hardy and tolerant of poor soils than wheat, and thus became the dominant crop on many marginal and northernmost European sites.

[44] Another hardy crop, bere, a kind of barley, was grown in Scandinavia and England and especially in marginal agricultural areas in Scotland.

[46] In Wiltshire in England in the 13th and 14th centuries, wheat, barley, and oats were the three most common crops, with varying percentages of each on different manors.

[48] Livestock was more important in northern Europe than in the Mediterranean area where dry weather in summer reduced the fodder available for animals.

Despite the reputed inefficiencies, the open-field system existed for roughly one thousand years over large parts of Europe and only disappeared slowly from 1500 to 1800.

The "brave new world" of a harsher, more competitive and capitalistic society from the 16th century onward destroyed the securities and certainties of land tenure in the open-field system.

[59] The earliest evidence of progress in increasing productivity comes in the 14th and 15th centuries from the Low Countries of the Netherlands and Belgium, and Flanders in northern France.

As opposed to the extensive agriculture of medieval times, this new technique involved intensive cultivation of small plots of land.

Mouldboard plowing also produced the familiar ridge and furrow pattern of medieval fields which facilitated drainage of excess moisture.