Turning Point - Agricultural Revolution

Between 800s-1700s, the tools of farming basically stayed the same and few advancements in technology were made. The farmers of George Washington's day had no better tools than had the farmers of Julius Caesar's day; in fact, early Roman plows were superior to those in general use in America eighteen centuries later.

What Was the Agricultural Revolution?

The agricultural revolution was a period of agricultural development between the 18th century and the end of the 19th century, which saw a massive and rapid increase in agricultural productivity and vast improvements in farm technology.

The Agrarian Revolution is the term given to the transformation in agriculture in England during the Georgian period. Though the roots of the revolution go back as far as the late medieval period, it was not until the 18th century that these transformations really accelerated and began to drastically change the way people lived and, at the same time, changed the English landscape forever.

Causes

Enclosure Act

One of the prime changes brought on by the agrarian revolution was enclosure, the act which large tracts of land were fenced in. In the Middle Ages most land was farmed by individual farmers who each had a strip of a large, open field. Because land was used 'in common', changing land use was not easily implemented, and changes in farming practice were slow to be implemented. This change was brought about by the legislature/parliament and called the Enclosure Act.

Between 1730 and 1820 there were an astonishing total of over 3500 individual acts of Parliament authorizing enclosure of agricultural land. This resulted in almost all of the Midlands and the north being enclosed. Though often this enclosure created hardship for peasant farmers, the landowners were able to implement new farming practices such as regulated stock breeding, controlled crop rotation, and more efficient production on marginal farmland. But the social cost of these changes was immense, as many poor farm laborers were rendered redundant, poor farmers lost their land, and the rural working classes were often forced to move to industrial urban areas to find work.

New Crops

Some of the changes brought on by the Agrarian Revolution involved planting crops (particularly clover and turnips) to provide food for overwintering animals.

New Tools & Machines

Equally important were the introduction of new farm machinery, such as the wheeled seed drill, which mechanized the traditional practice of scattering seeds by hand. Another innovation was the horse hoe, a tool to eradicate weeds between rows of crops. Iron tools replaced earlier wooden ones - the iron plow was a big advance on the wooden plow, and was so much more efficient that it could be drawn by horses instead of oxen.

Robert Malthus

Malthusianism is a school of ideas derived from the political/economic thought of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings, An Essay on the Principle of Population, which describes how unchecked population growth is exponential while the growth of the food supply was expected to be arithmetical.

Malthus believed there were two types of "checks" that could then reduce the population, returning it to a more sustainable level. He believed there were "preventive checks" such as moral restraints (abstinence, delayed marriage until finances become balanced), and restricting marriage against persons suffering poverty and/or defects. Malthus believed in "positive checks", which lead to 'premature' death: disease, starvation, war, resulting in what is called a Malthusian catastrophe. The catastrophe would return population to a lower, more "sustainable", level. The term has been applied in different ways over the last two hundred years, and has been linked to a variety of other political and social movements, but almost always refers to advocates of population control. He ultimately believed that the population would grow larger than the available food supply causing widespread famine and death. The agricultural revolution assisted in alleviating the fear of such as problem.

Results

The Agricultural Revolution in Britain proved to be a major turning point in history. The population in 1750 reached the level of 5.7 million. This had happened before: in around 1350 and again in 1650. Each time, either the appropriate agricultural infrastructure to support a population this high was not present or plague or war occurred (which may have been related), a Malthusian catastrophe occurred, and the population fell. However, by 1750, when the population reached this level again, an onset in agricultural technology and new methods without outside disruption, and also the effects of sugar imports, allowed the population growth to be sustained.

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 advances in transportation, refrigeration, and many other technologies.

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