PH_Agriculture

Introduction

Industry

Agriculture

Population

Appendices

Recommended Reading

Engrossment and enclosure

Larger farms emerged from two different processes: engrossment and enclosure. Engrossment occurred when small farms were bought up and merged with others. Enclosure was a process incorporating common lands, moor land and waste into commercial farms. Enclosure had been going on since the middle ages but gathered pace during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when it was facilitated by Parliamentary Acts. Since Karl Marx first argued about the negative impact of enclosure on the economic security and living standards of the rural poor, historians have debated its role in the process of proletarianisation (the rise of landlessness and wage dependency in the workforce) and in removing a vital source of income for squatters, cottagers and small farmers. Such country dwellers relied upon grazing, hunting and other common rights to supplement their livelihoods and to maintain the viability of their small holdings and way of life.

The balance of historical research suggests that Marx was right in pointing to enclosure as a major force in transforming the countryside. Without the supplement of the commons small farms were in a weak position and became easy prey to being

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Illustration by Matthew Wright

bought up by larger concerns. Enclosure was costly both in securing legal representation, in getting an Act and in the very process of hedging and walling the enclosed land. Usually it was only the larger farmers of a community who were able to benefit. Worst hit were smallholders and small farmers whose wives and daughters in particular relied upon the commons for their activities in cow keeping, poultry and pig rearing. The loss of grazing rights for the predominantly female occupation of dairying was particularly important and contributed to the unemployment of young girls in the countryside and their migration into towns. One cow could generate as much as two thirds of an adult male wage over the course of a year and this was lost to many rural families.

The role of agriculture in industrialisation

The contribution of agriculture to the industrialising economy is a matter of debate because there are both positive and negative elements. On the positive side agriculture expanded to feed the growing workforce of the eighteenth century and to provide industrial raw materials such as grain and hops for brewing and hides for leather goods. Furthermore, it did this whilst absorbing a smaller proportion of the total workforce leaving growing numbers to swell the ranks of landless and potentially mobile wage earners. As well as releasing labour to the rest of the economy, agriculture also generated some capital flows to the trading and manufacturing sectors especially where landowners were involved in direct investment in coal or mineral extraction and in transport or urban development. Some seasonal cash surpluses from farming were also deposited in the growing banking sector where they became a source of short term lending to other branches of the economy. However, on the negative side agriculture only just kept ahead of the growing demand for foodstuffs and food prices rose. Starvation and hunger were avoided by only a narrow margin. At the same time, the high prices of agricultural commodities, the profits to be made in farming and the social prestige attached to landowning, attracted much capital away from industrialisation into land acquisition, country house building, enclosure and agricultural improvement just when the industrialising economy needed it most.