270 Agricultural Revolutions and Change
tradition. But open fields did not necessarily prevent innovations, nor enclosure
encourage them (see Havinden, 1961; Turner, 1986). Enclosure was not a direct
incentive to improve, though it did allow for the rewriting of leases and raising of
rents (Beckett, 1990). There remains widespread disagreement over whether pro-
ductive gains occurred following enclosure – some have suggested output gains of
50–100 per cent (Wordie, 1983), others a modest 10–15 per cent (McCloskey,
1975), and others still that enclosed farms were no better than open (Allen and
O’Grada, 1988).
Constraints to nationwide adoption
As I have described, there were commonly delays of 100–200 years between inven-
tion and widespread adoption. Technologies became common in restricted locali-
ties, but did not spread. Yet as rural Britain was so diverse such widespread coverage
should not be expected. Kerridge and Thirsk have suggested there were 38 to 48
distinct farming zones in England and Wales, comprising mixtures of subsistence
and market-oriented, pastoral, arable, dairying, special livestock enterprises, mar-
ket gardening, meat rearing, woodland and pasture (Thirsk, 1987; Kerridge,
1967). Before passing from one zone to another technologies required widespread
testing and adaptation. As Joan Thirsk put it ‘new agricultural crops and methods
could not find their niche within varied farming systems without undergoing a
long process of trial and error that could involve many delays and setbacks’ (Thirsk,
1987). But within zones diffusion could be slow if the improvement was costly or
risky – after Culley established watermeadows on his farm it took ‘near 20 years
before any other person ventured to pursue the practice, and profit by the example.
It is now beginning to spread in the neighborhood’ (Bailey and Culley, 1805).
If agricultural labourers were against change, their unwillingness could put an
end to innovation. This was particularly true for ploughs, drills or threshing
machines that reduced or changed the labour requirement of workers who had
spent years developing skills (Collins, 1969). New ploughs sent by Sir John Del-
aval to his estate did not meet with his ploughman’s approval, who suggested the
wood was twisted or green (MacDonald, 1977). But given the opportunity of
observing the advantages of a new technology, adoption could be rapid. Reapers in
Berwickshire in 1790 quickly adopted the scythe as a alternative to the sickle when
they were outpaced by imported labourers (MacDonald, 1977).
Not all innovations succeeded in eventually being adopted nationwide. Dye
crops, such as madder and woad, were experimented with in the 1600s, but did
not spread as they represented too great a financial risk; tobacco was cultivated
despite a government ban that aimed to encourage cultivation in Virginia, but it
too died out, probably because it was too labour-intensive; liquorice was common
around Pontefract and Worksop, but did not spread (Thirsk, 1985). The interven-
tion by government in tobacco cultivation was rare – generally it neither directly
supported nor hindered the adoption of new technologies.