(^92) an environmenTal hisTory of Wildlife in england
were hard, although not impossible, to adopt where open fields existed, but
these were now enclosed on a large scale using parliamentary enclosure acts.
These also allowed vast areas of common land, formerly utilized as rough
grazing and for fuel production, to be brought into cultivation. The two
developments were often linked, for once fodder crops were grown in the
fields and either consumed there, or in neighbouring farmyards, the downs
and heaths were no longer required as places to graze the folding flocks:
they too could be ploughed up and used to grow crops. Between 1750 and
c.1840 production, of cereals especially, was thus increased both by raising
the yields on existing arable land and by extending the cultivated acreage.
These innovations unquestionably increased production. But the
‘agricultural revolution’ was, in fact, a more complex process. To varying
extents in different regions, small peasant farms were gradually replaced
by larger capitalist enterprises, bringing efficiencies of scale to farming. In
addition, the new rotations were more important in some districts – those
of light, easily-leached land, the traditional ‘sheep-corn’ areas – than in
others, where the soils were more fertile and held nutrients better.^3 Here
other innovations were critical, such as the adoption of systematic field
drainage, initially using ‘bush’ drains – trenches cut across fields which
were filled with brushwood and/or various other materials, capped with
straw or furze, and then backfilled with soil.^4 Even on light land the
benefits brought by the new crops should not be exaggerated. In chalkland
areas yields of barley increased by perhaps 50–100 per cent between
1750 and c.1840, but those of wheat, the main grain crop consumed
by humans, probably rose by only around 25 per cent. It was in areas
of heathy, sandy, marginal ground that the greatest increases occurred,
with yields of wheat doubling and those of barley tripling: but this was
particularly poor land and the increases were from a very low base.^5 It is
also worth remembering – for it often seems to be forgotten by historians –
that when a farm adopted the ‘new’ rotations the acreage devoted to grain
crops fell: in a traditional course of ‘two crops and a fallow’, two-thirds
of the land was devoted to growing cereals at any one time, but when an
‘improved’ four-course rotation was adopted this fell to half, offsetting to a
significant extent the scale of the ‘headline’ yield improvement. Indeed, it is
arguable that by sowing half their land with fodder crops farmers were in
fact mainly trying to satisfy an expanding market for meat, especially among
better-off town dwellers, rather than trying to enhance cereal yields. The fact
that fertility on light land was no longer largely maintained through the use
of mobile folding flocks also allowed the development of new sheep breeds,
designed to walk little, and to grow fat in the fields of turnips and clover.
An increase in soil fertility resulting from increased manure would not in
itself have served to increase yields. It would have benefited weeds as much as
cereals: but here the new rotations brought other benefits. The turnips were
planted in wide rows, allowing weeding, while the dense foliage produced
as they matured shaded out competitors. Grain crops were also increasingly
‘dibbled’ in rows, rather than being broadcast, likewise allowing a greater
elle
(Elle)
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