Technology Adaptation: Agricultural Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain 271Attitudes to experimentation
There is considerable evidence to indicate that farmers, once they adopted one of
these new technologies, experimented to make the changes necessary for its adap-
tation to local conditions. They conducted field trials to test the efficacy of various
manure and nutrient treatments on soils; they tested corn drills against other
methods of seed sowing; they introduced new crops into rotations on some fields,
whilst leaving others unchanged; they tested irrigated against dryland meadows;
and they tested new methods of pest control. As Caird put it ‘the detail is every-
where varied by the judicious agriculturalist to suit the necessities and advantages
of the particular locality’ (Caird, 1852). Farmers were concerned with integrating
the results of experiments into their farm economies, and so analysed results to
discover which were the most profitable options. To many, experiments were seen
as a necessary part of farming. They did not expect to resolve issues once and for
all, but rather saw them as part of an adaptive performance in the face of unpre-
dictable climatic and market conditions (see Richards, 1989).
Many experiments were conducted first in kitchen gardens where they could
be protected and monitored, and if successful then spread to the rest of the farm.
In the 1780s a farmer discovered a single very productive ear of wheat in a hedge;
he carefully cultivated it for four years in his garden, and by the mid-1790s this
variety of ‘Hedge Wheat’ was said to be ‘widespread and superior’ (Goldhawk,
1795). The success of kitchen gardens as sites for experimentation was clear during
the 1600s as commercial gardening grew rapidly to supply new vegetable and fruit
crops to cities. London became surrounded by market gardens – their area growing
from 4000 to 45,000 hectares between 1660 and 1720 (Thick, 1985). Innovative
technologies and techniques were pioneered in gardens, such as row cropping of
carrots, beans and peas to facilitate hoeing of weeds; new flower, fruit and tree
crops brought from abroad; hot beds of still decomposing manure and compost
put into long beds one metre high and broad for the cultivation of radishes, mush-
rooms, cucumber and asparagus; and the use of glass cloches to extend the growing
season (Thick, 1985).
The practice of continuous experimentation was widespread, and the people
who knew best how to conduct them were the farmers themselves. Farmer knowl-
edge was recognized by de La Rochefoucauld on his visit to Suffolk: ‘the knowl-
edge which all these farmers possess is incredible – you must see them to realize
how simple farmers can talk for an hour on the principles of their calling and on
the reasons underlying their various forms of cultivation’ (de La Rochefoucauld,
1784). Young said that ‘experiment is the rational foundation of all useful knowl-
edge: let everything be tried’ (Young, 1767). He published Experimental Agricul-
ture in 1770, comprising some 900 pages of detailed results of five years of
experiments on 120 hectares of various soils. He had begun confidently expecting
conclusive answers, but concluded the task in a different mood: ‘I entered upon
the following experiments with an ardent hope of reducing every doubtful point
to certainty; and I finished them with the chagrin of but poorly answering my own