The Dictionary of Human Geography

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dominance of small farms worked mainly

by family labour to a system whereby

most land was owned by large estates, let

as large farms at commercial rents to cap-

italist tenant farmers and worked by wage

labour. Both the chronology and causes of

this second shift have been the subject of

much debate. There is no agreement over

whether the key period of change was the

sixteenth, seventeenth or eighteenth cen-

tury, but the primacy once accorded to

enclosureis now usually displaced by

causes such as population change and

long-term price movements.

(2) Technical changes, particularly in the

eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, have

loomed large in accounts of the Agricul-

tural Revolution. In the arable sector, the

key innovation was the introduction of

more complex crop rotations including

clover and turnips, which provided high-

quality fodder for animals, thus allowing

the area of grassland to be reduced without

decreasing the production of animal prod-

ucts. It now seems clear that these and

associated changes allowed an extension

of the arable area between 1750 and 1850

(Campbell and Overton, 1993; William-

son, 2002). In the pastoral sector, technical

improvements were related largely to se-

lective animal breeding aimed at increasing

carcass weight, decreasing the age at ma-

turity (slaughter) for meat animals or in-

creasing the yields of wool or milk.

(3) Until recently, discussions of agrarian

change were not informed by any direct

accounts of productivity, but measure-

ments of changes in productivity and

their connection with technical change

have since been placed on a more secure

statistical footing (Wrigley, 1985a; Allen,

1992, 1999; Overton, 1996).

In the early twentieth century, the historio-

graphical emphasis was on technical and social

change, and the most important changes were

held to have taken place in the late eighteenth

and early nineteenth centuries, in parallel with

what was then thought to be the key period

of industrialization. Chambers and Mingay’s

classic (1966) account more or less repeated

this framework, but its restatement coincided

with a series of major revisions: Jones (1965)

identified the century from 1650 to 1750 as

the key period, while Kerridge (1967) argued

that the Agricultural Revolution’s key achieve-

ments were between 1570 and 1673. The

debates have multiplied ever since.

Although recent work has generally focused

on productivity, different measures of product-

ivity have been emphasized. Wrigley (1985a)

has stressed the growth of labour productivity

between 1550 and 1850, and the way in which

that allowed a wider restructuring of the econ-

omy through a shift in occupational structure

away from agriculture towards manufacturing

and services. Grain yields are known to have

doubled between 1500 and 1800. Allen

(1992; cf. Glennie, 1991) put the growth in

wheat yields in the seventeenth century at

centre stage, and in his subsequent (1999)

account emphasized the growth in total food

output between 1600 and 1750 and between

1800 and 1850, as well as the growth of wheat

yields. Overton (1996) has emphasized three

features of the century after 1750: the unpre-

cedented increase in total food production im-

plied by the tripling of population over any

previously achieved level, a rise in overall

grain yields, and the fact that these productiv-

ity changes coincided with a period of funda-

mental technical change. Turner, Beckett and

Afton (2001) have argued that the key

changes took place between 1800 and 1850,

though they pay no attention to the un-

doubted achievements of the period before

1700.

A series of major and historically unpreced-

ented achievements can be identified in Eng-

lish agriculture for every identified sub-period

between 1550 and 1850, therefore, and it is

probably unhelpful to isolate one particular

element and identify the period of its achieve-

ment as ‘the Agricultural Revolution’. Such a

broad perspective sits comfortably alongside

recent views of industrialization as a process

that began well before 1750. lst

Suggested reading

Allen (1992); Campbell and Overton (1991);

Overton (1996); Wrigley (1988).

agro-food system According to the

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and

Development (OECD),‘thesetofactivitiesand

relationships that interact to determine what,

how much, by what methods and for whom

food is produced and distributed’ (Whatmore,

2002b, pp. 57–8). The most commonly ac-

knowledged sectors/spheres that comprise the

agro-food system are agrarian production itself

(farming); agricultural science and technology

products and services to farming (upstream in-

dustries); food processing, marketing, distribu-

tion and retail (downstream industries); and

household food purchasing, preparation and

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_A Final Proof page 20 31.3.2009 9:44pm

AGRO-FOOD SYSTEM