268 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
to observe the practices on the estate, renowned for its rotation system that could
feed 1500 sheep with no resort to permanent pastures or meadows.
Agricultural training
In a period that lacked formal agricultural training as well as extension institu-
tions, farmers developed their own informal training networks. It was common,
for example, for farmers to send their sons in their late teens or early twenties to
spend a year in a progressive region (MacDonald, 1977). George Culley, an
improving farmer and stockbreeder, frequently housed 8–10 students, and indi-
cated in his letters that his neighbours did likewise (MacDonald, 1977). In some
cases farm workers travelled to learn a specific technique – the first watermeadows
in Northumberland were constructed on Culley’s farm in the 1780s following a
visit by one of his workers to George Boswell’s farm in Dorset (MacDonald, 1977).
Others learnt on the farm: a ploughman at Kelso who learnt how to drill turnips
from his employer, who had himself spent 6 years in southern England, then spent
13 years as both ploughman and instructor of apprentices. When he leased his own
farm he had an even greater impact on diffusion ‘as a farmer paying rent, and act-
ing at his own risk, had an immediate influence, as to the ... rapid diffusion of
turnip ... husbandry among practical farmers’ (MacDonald, 1977).
A government extension agency
Government agricultural policy was so dominated by promoting enclosure that
little attention was paid to supporting farmer extension mechanisms. The Board of
Agriculture, established in 1794, was charged with ‘making every essential inquiry
into the agricultural state, and the means of promoting the internal improvement’
(Young, 1804), but despite Young being Secretary, it was underfunded and had too
little support from government. It commissioned surveys for each county, but the
surveyors were not necessarily farmers, and the results were patchy. Some were
short and poorly written – only 38- and 34-page reports were produced for Shrop-
shire and Rutland (Bishton, 1794; Crutchley, 1794), whilst others were much
more comprehensive – 286 pages for Norfolk and 168 pages for Staffordshire
(Kent, 1794; Pitt, 1794). New surveys were commissioned, but financial support
to the surveyors and for publication was again inadequate. The Board closed in
1822, having succeeded only in sponsoring premiums and lectures, publishing
articles and influencing government policy on taxes, weights and measures (God-
dard, 1989).