PH_Agriculture

Introduction

Industry

Agriculture

Population

Appendices

Recommended Reading

AGRICULTURE

It used to be argued that an agricultural revolution preceded the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century and that this was a vital spur to industrialisation. Nowadays historians are divided about whether agriculture played such a positive role in the wider transformation of the economy.

Growing output and productivity

Agriculture was certainly a centrally important sector throughout the period. In 1800 it employed half the national labour force and accounted for one third of national income but these shares had been declining in the eighteenth century and were to decline more dramatically in the nineteenth. Although it is impossible to isolate a distinctive period to which the term agricultural revolution could be applied, change and innovation over the two centuries was very significant and resulted in a doubling of productivity between 1700 and 1850. Output increased steeply, especially in the second half of the eighteenth century, and the rising productivity of the agricultural labour force set England apart from its European neighbours.

Different Indices of Agricultural Output
Adapted from: R.C. Allen, 'Agriculture and the Industrial Revolution', Fig. 5.1, p. 101.

Changes in crops and rotations and in the structure of landholding and wage labour

Change occurred in two main ways. First by innovations in the sort of crops grown, in crop and livestock rotations, and in the regional and local specialisation of production. These contributed significantly to productivity increase. Some areas specialised in arable production, others in pasture and many farms near to towns specialised in dairy produce, poultry, and vegetables. Specialisation for urban markets accelerated even further afield with considerable expansion in the Scottish cattle droving trade to London, for example. The fertility of the soil and grain yields in many arable areas was considerably increased by introducing new crop rotations from the later seventeenth century. These usually had a clover, rye grass or sainfoin element which fixed nitrogen in the soil during the fallow period. Rotations of livestock and arable were also increasingly common, animal dung adding to the fertility of the land.

Farming types and the location of rural industry, England and Wales c. 1650-1740. Based on the work of Joan Thirsk, redrawn by Mark Overton (Click on image to enlarge)

Secondly, change occurred in the structure of landowning and farming with the growth of larger farms, which were normally rented out by landowners to tenant farmers. Such farms, once they exceeded around 100 acres, were too large for a family labour force and tended to employ male wage labour. The number of small farms declined as did the practice of live-in farm service for young people of both sexes. Large commercially-oriented farms became typical in many regions and small-scale subsistence farming lost out. Family farms using live-in servants and labour of both sexes remained prevalent in certain regions such as Cumbria and mid Wales and in pockets of urban hinterlands where market gardening and poultry rearing were important. Elsewhere the system of large tenanted farms using almost exclusively male wage labour became normal and the female workforce on the land declined very markedly in the nineteenth century.