Agricultural Sustainability and Open-Field Farming in England 243by season communal management that was adjusted to accommodate fluctuating
annual conditions. In other places such adjustments became permanent features.
For example, at Heath and Reach in Bedfordshire it was decided that the tradi-
tional three-field system could only be improved by fallowing every fourth year
instead of every three. Therefore in 1814 the system of two crops and a fallow
became three crops and a fallow in which the third crop was clover, or what others
might see as a cropped fallow. It was also agreed that anyone wishing to sow turnip
seed or potatoes in the fallow field could do so (Bedfordshire Archives, BO/1334).
In Oxfordshire, the open fields were often broken up into larger numbers of rota-
tional units to get around the rigidities of operating only in a two- or three-field
manner. At Kirtlington this adaptability reached new heights when 12 arable divi-
sions replaced the original two fields (Lambert, 1955). Such adjustments helped to
maintain the ecological integrity of the soil as well as demonstrating equity of
ownership through equity of decision making.
We know that in some areas it was possible to modify and adapt the open-field
systems to accommodate new crops and new rotations (the examples above and
generally in Havinden, 1961). However, such open-field flexibility was by no
means certain, and there is no satisfactory way of quantifying the production or
consumption of the numerous new crops which were thus cultivated, nor whether
they were always first introduced into the open-field system (Thirsk, 1997). For
example, both woad and rapeseed (to name only two examples) seem generally to
have been grown in areas of old enclosure outside the common fields. In the case
of woad, in the Midlands generally but notably in Northamptonshire, it is not
clear whether it was introduced into the open fields, rather than the woodland
areas. Many parishes also had areas of enclosed land, usually under grass but some-
times in exhausting arable crops such as hemp, flax or hops (Mingay, 1984, p96).
Economic considerations forced communities not only to consider new crops but
also whether to alter the ratio of arable to grass. During the demographic quietus
before 1750, and in the light of the stable or declining crop price profile it encoun-
tered and partly determined, there was a countervailing history of higher prices for
meat and dairy products, as well as a rising industrial demand for wool and other
raw materials derived from agriculture. The conjunction of these factors encour-
aged a move away from arable production towards grass (Jones, 1967, p8). With
relatively stable contemporary wages in association with the decline in basic bread
prices (as depicted in the wheat price trend in Table 11.1), the implied increase in
purchasing power was spent by switching demand to animals and animal prod-
ucts, the prices of which held up throughout the period (Table 11.1). Grain prices
recovered in the third and fourth quarters of the 18th century in response to the
early effects of the demographic revolution which we date to this period. Yet adjust-
ments in standards of living which we associate with the richer society that devel-
oped and which defied the Malthusian spectre, meant that dietary changes that
were already in place could flourish. To that extent there was no reversal of the trend
that was in place. In Table 11.1, in parenthesis, we rework the price trend to show
that the terms of trade may have turned back towards grain but not sufficiently to