An Industry Evolves

Agriculture slowly began to develop into an industry as people realised that certain types of farming were best suited to particular areas and land conditions. This led to people focusing their farming activities to particular types of farming rather than producing everything.

As a result of this, people began to trade food items that they had a surplus of for those that they needed. People also exchanged their skills and machinery, thus making farming more efficient. This was the start of the Agricultural Revolution, which began around the 17th Century and continued into the 19th Century. During this period there were some important farming developments which revolutionised the agricultural industry and saw food production increase dramatically.

One reason output grew was through new farming systems involving the rotation of turnips and clover, although these were part of the general intensification of agricultural production, with more food being produced from the same area of land. Intensity was also increased by land reclamation, such as the draining of the fenlands, clearing of woodland and reclamation of upland pastures.

The mix of crops also changed, replacing low-yielding types, such as rye, with higher-yielding types such as wheat or barley. The balance between arable and permanent pasture also changed, so that more productive arable land was replacing permanent pasture. This does not mean that fodder supplies were falling, quite the reverse, for the loss of permanent pasture was made good by new fodder crops, especially turnips and clover, in arable rotations. Not only did these crops result in an increase in fodder yields, but they were also instrumental in the reclamation of many lowland heaths from rough pasture to productive arable farms.

The most important new crop in this context is the turnip, because it meant that the area of fallow land could be reduced. This was because one of the purposes of the fallow was to clear the land of weeds by ploughing, but a crop of turnips sown in rows could be hoed to remove weeds while it was growing. Thus fallow land which was about 20 per cent of the arable area in Pembrokeshire in 1750 steadily declined to reach only 4 per cent in 1880.

Cereal yields also increased. Wheat yields increased by about a quarter between 1700 and 1800, and then by about a half between 1800 and 1850, and the most recent research emphasises the early 19th century as the period of crucial change. The key to increasing cereal yields was nitrogen, which we now know was the 'limiting factor' in determining cereal yields before about 1830.

Before this time, farmers did not know formally of the existence of nitrogen, but we can interpret many of their actions in terms of the conservation of existing stocks of nitrogen, and the addition of new nitrogen to the soil. Existing stocks were exploited, for example, by ploughing up permanent pasture to grow cereals. Available nitrogen was conserved by feeding bullocks in stalls, collecting their manure (which is rich in nitrogen), and placing it where it was needed. Also, most importantly, new nitrogen was added to the soil using legumes - a class of plants that have bacteria attached to their roots, which convert atmospheric nitrogen into nitrates in the soil that can be used by whatever plants are grown there in the following few years.

Legumes had been sown since the Middle Ages in the form of peas, beans and vetches, but from the mid-17th century farmers began to grow clover, both white and red, for the same purpose, and by the 19th century had dramatically increased the quantity of nitrogen in the soil available for cereal crops. In Norfolk, for example, between 1700 and 1850, the doubling of the area of legumes and a switch to clover tripled the rate of symbiotic nitrogen fixation.

This new system of farming was remarkable because it was sustainable; the output of food was increased dramatically, without endangering the long-term viability of English agriculture. But just as a sustainable agriculture had been achieved, the development of chemical fertilisers and other external inputs undermined this sustainability. An essentially organic agriculture was gradually replaced by a farming system that depended on energy-intensive inputs dependent on the exploitation of fossil fuels.

The increased production of food and greater efficiency of farming meant that each agricultural worker produced more food, so the proportion of the workforce in agriculture fell. This falling proportion of workers in agriculture enabled the proportion working in industry and services to rise. In other words improved agricultural production made the industrial revolution possible, and many would regard the industrial revolution as the beginning of the modern world. By 1850 only 22 per cent of the British workforce was in agriculture - the smallest proportion for any country in the world.

Exactly how those working on the land were able to produce more food remains something of a mystery. More animal power was available to English farmers than to their counterparts elsewhere, and from the 1820s and 30s a wide variety of machinery was developed, which was particularly important for improving the efficiency of the cutting and threshing of grain. The improvement in labour productivity, however, had begun long before this. The key probably lies in the way the British workforce was organised and employed. The development of agrarian capitalism in Britain, with those involved in agriculture divided into landowners, capitalist tenant farmers and labourers, saw the development of better farm management and more efficiency in using the workforce.