ChapTer siX
The revolution in agriculture
The character of the ‘agricultural revolution’
England’s industrial revolution could not have happened without an
accompanying improvement in agricultural production. As population
soared, and as a higher proportion of the workforce came to be engaged
in industry, food shortages would have occurred, rising prices would have
choked off home consumption of manufactured products, and food imports
would have leached abroad much of the capital required for industrial
investment. Most researchers agree that this expansion in food supplies was
largely the consequence of the adoption of new crops and rotations. Before
the eighteenth century, the yields of cereal crops had been held back by a
paucity of nitrogen and other key elements in the soil. These were constantly
being depleted by cropping, as well as being leached away by precipitation,
especially on lighter land. But the only significant source of fertility was
manure, the quantities of which were limited by the fact that relatively few
livestock could be kept over the winter. In spite of the spread of ‘floating’,
supplies of hay were still limited in most areas. During the eighteenth century,
however, turnips and clover were more widely adopted as field crops,
alternating with courses of cereals in a variety of new rotations, of which
the ‘Norfolk Four Course’ – a recurrent cycle of wheat, turnips, barley and
clover – is the most famous.^1 The turnips (or other roots) were fed off in the
fields by sheep or taken to cattle stalled in yards, while the clover (or similar
green fodder crop) was grazed directly or cut for hay, and had the additional
benefit of fixing nitrogen in the soil directly from the atmosphere. In reality,
many farmers employed some variation on the ‘four course’, on more fertile
soils for example often adding an additional cereal course, but the effects
were much the same. More livestock could now be kept, more manure
produced, and thus higher yields achieved.^2 The new forms of cropping