application of the term is to describe the fundamental shift in agricultural theory
and practice that took place in Great Britain from the 1700s to the early 1900s,
resulting in marked increases in overall production by volume, as well as sharp
increases in productivity per agricultural laborer and per unit land. A somewhat
similar process occurred in the United States in the late 1800s and early 20th
century.
The agricultural revolution in GreatBritain was an extended process that
stretched across several centuries. By 1700, scientific innovations in agricultural
techniques were being more commonly applied on British farmsteads, resulting
in higher yields and more effective use of farmland. A famous advocate of the
application of new, scientific means of farming was Jethro Tull, who was one of
the first scholars to study agriculturalsystems of production in a comparative
way. Tull was familiar with farming techniques used outside of Great Britain and
emphasized the control of weeds, soil preparation, and proper planting techniques.
He also was an early advocate of mechanization in agriculture, and invented a seed
drill that gradually replaced the hand-sowing of seeds for a number of crops in
England, although the new technology was not widely adopted until several deca-
des after his death. Tull also made important modifications to the horse-drawn
plough, which improved the furrowing of the soil, and in subsequent decades his
successors in agricultural innovation continued modifying the device, resulting
in the application of cast iron ploughs based on Chinese designs that were superior
to those used in Great Britain at the time, in a classic example ofcultural diffu-
sion. The seed drill and improved ploughs were still dependent on draft animals,
mostly horses, however, which limited their efficiency and made them more physi-
cally demanding to operate.
Changes in land tenure during the 1700s were also a key component of the agri-
cultural revolution. One of the most profound and controversial was the process of
enclosure, which was designed to consolidate smaller units of agricultural land
into larger, contiguous parcels that could be worked more efficiently. In addition,
land that had been held in common, especially grazing pastures, was enclosed
and awarded private title, reducing theavailability of open range to those who
owned little or no land, and who relied on the common pasturelands to feed their
livestock. The open field system widely followed in central England gave way to
land tenure using severalty, meaning private title to the land and its use. Although
the enclosure process in Great Britain can be dated to the Middle Ages, by the
mid-1700s the concept was supported by the English Parliament, which beginning
in the 1740s passed legislation accelerating enclosure. Parliament codified many
individual laws on enclosure with the General Enclosure Act in 1801, which left
only a small percentage of the agricultural land in common holding. Enclosure6 Agricultural Revolution