Technology Adaptation: Agricultural Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain 283canker caterpillars. ‘In five days they cleared the whole most completely, marching
... through the field on the hunt, eyeing the leaves on both sides with great care to
devour every one they could see’ (Young, 1784b). In Devon, a farmer wrote of the
benefit of fumigating orchards with smoke to reduce pest damage (Gullett, 1786).
More common was the treatment of seeds before sowing to reduce fungal or insect
attack. In the 1780s, Young steeped wheat seed already black with fungi in various
mixtures of water, lime water, wood ashes solution and arsenic and compared the
number of smutty ears after a season (Young, 1788). Any treatment of more than
4 hours reduced infection to 1 per cent of that of water or no treatment. Later he
describes the benefit of steeping turnip seed in water for 48 hours before sowing to
reduce turnip fly damage (Young, 1813a).
Lessons for Sustainable Agricultural Revolutions
The successes and failures of the British agricultural revolution give some indica-
tions about the preconditions necessary for fostering sustainable agricultural revo-
lutions today. Intensification of on-farm resources increases crop and livestock
productivity, and so ensures that agriculture does not pollute or contaminate the
environment (Pretty, 1990a; Conway and Pretty, 1991). Increased production
based on internal resources increases the need for labour, and so increases the
population-supporting capacity of the land. And more innovations mean more
options for farmers to diversify, so reducing the risk of physical or economic shocks
and stresses threatening their livelihoods. Most importantly, though, farmers fully
involved in the process of technology generation, extension and experimental
adaptation more readily make improvements. In the British agricultural revolution
all this was achieved without explicit support from government.
At the same time, however, extensification was being strongly promoted even
though it destroyed the common property resources that were essential buffers
against adversity for those relying on the provisions of fuel, fodder, food and
employment opportunities (Hardy, 1887; Collins, 1989; Jodha, 1991). During
the agricultural revolution their value was barely recognized. They were called
wastes, and represented to many a symbol of backwardness or underdevelopment.
Young called those who opposed enclosure ‘Goths and Vandals’ (Gazley, 1973);
John Smyth, a Gloucester landowner, said ‘large commons and wastes burdened a
village with beggarly cottages and idle people. They were better enclosed’ (Thirsk,
1985); an Assistant Tithe Commissioner said that the heaths of Suffolk were ‘mere
sand encumbered with furze (Ulex europeaus) and fit for nothing but rabbits and
sheepwalk’ (Burrell, 1960); and Board of Agriculture reporters said common prop-
erty resources were ‘the trifling fruits of overstocked and ill-kept lands’ (Hum-
phries, 1990). But after enclosure poor farmers had to destock as fodder sources
beyond their farms were no longer available and hay prices rose; and many farmers,
given small plots of land in lieu of grazing rights, sold them to larger landowners,