British Agricultural Revolution

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.

[4][5] One important change in farming methods was the move in crop rotation to turnips and clover in place of fallow under the Norfolk four-course system.

Other countries in Europe[6][7] (including France,[6][8][9] Prussia (Germany),[10][11][12][13] and Russia[14][15]), East Asia[16][17] and North America[18][19][20] followed suit in the next two centuries.

(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.

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.

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.

[37][38] British improvements included Joseph Foljambe's cast iron plough (patented 1730), which combined an earlier Dutch design with several innovations.

By the 1760s Foljambe was making large numbers of these ploughs in a factory outside of Rotherham, using standard patterns with interchangeable parts.

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.

[42] 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.

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.

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.

In the feudal open-field system, peasant farmers were assigned individual narrow strips of land in large fields which were used for growing crops.

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.

Legislation regulating middlemen required registration, addressed weights and measures, fixing of prices and collection of tolls by the government.

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

[50] 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.

[53] 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.

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.

Massive sodium nitrate (NaNO3) deposits found in the Atacama Desert, Chile, were brought under British financiers like John Thomas North and imports were started.

Massive deposits of sea bird guano (11–16% nitrogen, 8–12% phosphate, and 2–3% potassium), were found and started to be imported after about 1830.

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.

[63] 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.

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 in the decade following the American Civil War.

[69][70] 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.

Barrington Moore stressed the "importance of getting rid of agriculture as a major social activity" in the formation of the working class.

But in all cases, the power shifted from land owners to industrial entrepreneurs or central-planning states,[80][81][82] marking "revolutionary break with the past.