The revoluTion in agriCulTure^93intensity of weeding. This required large inputs of labour, and in a host of
other ways the ‘new husbandry’ depended on a pool of flexible, relatively
poorly paid workers. Manure produced by stall-fed cattle had to be brought
into the fields, while on sandy land turnips would not grow well unless the
acidity was reduced by marling – that is, the practice of excavating pits in
the fields to reach a more calcareous subsoil, which was then spread on the
surface – a particularly arduous and labour-intensive task. Neutralizing soil
acidity was also crucial because nitrogen is converted into nitrites by soil
bacteria which are highly susceptible to acidity. Without a healthy microbe
population, any increased applications of manure would have been pointless:
they could simply not have been broken down.
A cheap supply of farm labour was to some extent simply supplied by
rapid population growth. But in addition it was an indirect consequence of
industrialization, which served to concentrate manufacturing in certain areas of
the country – the north and west, where water power was freely available and
the principal coal reserves were located – leading in turn to a measure of de-
industrialization in the south and east, and thus freeing up cheap labour for often
seasonal or casual agricultural work. This was particularly important because
of another significant change in economic geography. The complex pattern of
agricultural regions which had developed by the seventeenth century, described
in the previous chapter, included some mainly arable districts in the centre and
west of England and some largely pastoral ones in the east. By the middle of
the nineteenth century arable farming was – as today – firmly concentrated in
the now de-industrializing east and south of England, where the climate was
best suited to the production of cereal crops (Figure 18). The wetter western
and Midland areas had been largely laid to grass. This revolution in land use
patterns, which was arguably at least as important as any change in raising levels
of agricultural production, was partly the consequence of enclosure, and of the
adoption of new techniques like marling and under-drainage.^6 But it was mainly
the result of improvements in transport infrastructure, which allowed crops to
be cultivated in one area and moved with relative ease to another. Once again,
we can see the close and intimate connection between the two ‘revolutions’.
Moreover, a looming food gap was not only averted by improvements in
agriculture. Rising sugar imports provided an alternative source of calories,
while a decline in the proportion of people involved in outdoors manual
work reduced the need for food: in 1863 the families of agricultural workers
consumed almost 50 per cent more calories per adult male equivalent than
those of urban workers.^7 Food consumption may also have been reduced simply
because the population was warmer, thanks to the increasing availability of
coal and the steady decline in the cost of clothing, prices for cotton garments
falling in real terms by around 85 per cent between 1750 and 1850.^8 A slow
but steady increase in the scale of potato cultivation, again closely connected
with progressive improvements in transport systems, also played a part. Acre
for acre potatoes yield twice as much nutrition as wheat but ‘they are less
concentrated as a food source... because of their high water content, their
storage life is shorter, and the cost of transport much greater’.^9