How The Agricultural Revolution Sowed The Seed For Modern Farming Practices

Modern wheat harvest - Maurice Flesier, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Farming today is a careful balance of technology, science, and nature coming together to feed the world.

Sophisticated computer-based machinery, crop processing techniques, and the ability to grow plants without soil or sunlight are all part of modern farming practices that efficiently increase crop yields and reduce waste.

It’s not only plant-based food production that has become more advanced - animal husbandry has too.

Animal breeding to produce meat, milk, eggs, and raw cloth-making material has been streamlined and made more successful with the use of artificial insemination, sustainable breeding programs that play to genetic strengths, cloning technology, and modern veterinary care.

Of course, there are still farmers and breeders who practice traditional agricultural techniques and produce heirloom products, but the majority of farming has moved with innovation to feed an ever-increasing global population.

But how has agriculture got to this point?

It has been developing for around 12,000 years since people started to settle and leave behind their nomadic ways. However, it was the Agricultural Revolution beginning in Britain and taking place between the 17th and late 19th centuries that modernized farming and laid the foundations of the global agricultural practices of today.

The Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution went hand in hand. The improved crop production of the former freed workers from the countryside and drove them to industrial towns to look for work. The technology boom of the Industrial Revolution in turn improved agricultural machinery.

Here are the key revolution moments that have led to farming as we know it today…

Reeve and Serfs harvesting -  anonymous (Queen Mary Master), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Land enclosure

Medieval farming followed a feudal system by which tenant farmers held their strips of land from their local lord. In addition to these strips of land in large open fields, they also had rights to use the common land to graze their animals on or to pannage their pigs in the forest in return for service to their lord when required.

The economic aftermath of the Black Death in the 14th century started to see the feudal system decline with a lack of labor and rising wages, although feudalism did cling on in some countries for centuries after.

Land, including the commons, slowly became enclosed over the next couple of centuries, but it was the Inclosure Act of 1773 in Britain that allowed landowners to enclose their land and charge higher rents to those farming it.

This was a huge change in the way land was farmed and opened the way up for new practices.

Crop rotation

Crop rotation has been practiced in some form since the medieval period. This involved planting a wheat or barley crop in one field, maybe oats or legumes in a second field, and leaving the third field fallow. This allowed the nitrogen to be replaced in the legume field, manure of grazing animals replenished nutrients in the fallow field, while the intense nutrient-depleting cereal crops grew in the first field before rotating in the next growing season.

Charles ‘Turnip’ Townshend was a British politician who had a keen interest in agriculture. When he left the government he dedicated himself to the cause and helped to introduce the Norfolk Four-Course crop rotation system into Britain, replacing the outdated three-crop system.

This system did away with leaving a field fallow and included four different crops. Wheat and barley were the cereal crops, turnips were a fodder crop that allowed the soil to rest, and clover was a grazing crop that replenished soil nutrients. The new system increased crop yields and soil fertility across the country.

Selective animal breeding

The later end of the Agricultural Revolution period saw a fashion for paintings and prints of grotesquely oversized livestock animals.

One such example of this popular art is an etching of the Durham Ox, a celebrity animal of his day that was exhibited frequently by his owner Mr John Day. The brown and cream beast almost fills the picture and is practically rectangular in shape.

The trend for images of prize animals was representative of the fashion for selective breeding, with the aim to produce animals that were fatter and meatier.

Robert Bakewell was an agriculturalist who developed a breeding method on his family farm in the mid to late 18th century. His ‘in-and-in’ method bred animals with strong traits together while removing the animals with unwanted traits from the breeding pool.

He was one of the first who favored meat production over wool and working stock production, and his deliberate breeding program made this a success.

His methods caught on amongst livestock farmers of his time and led to animal rearing as we know it today.

The Durham Ox - J. Boultbee, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Machinery

For centuries crop seeds were broadcast by hand, cut with scythes, and, in the case of wheat, hand threshed and winnowed. These were extremely labor-intensive and physical jobs requiring a lot of people. The agricultural and Industrial Revolution provided solutions to these issues.

The hand scattering of crop seeds was wasteful with many seeds not taking root, suffering mold, or being eaten by birds. Oxford-born Jethro Tull invented the Seed Drill in 1701 which made planting more efficient.

The drill combined a plow, seed hopper, planting funnel to guide the seeds, and a farrow to cover the seeds once planted. The drill evolved to be pulled by heavy horses and planted crops in neat rows, becoming the basis of modern arable farming.

In 1737 Andrew Rodger invented a hand-operated winnowing machine that separated the wheat from the chaff, which took a lot of physical effort out of the process and cut down on the time it took. However, it was steam engines and Andrew Meikle’s 1787 steam-powered threshing machine that changed the game.

Patrick Bell invented and used a reaping machine that was pushed by horses in 1828 but he never patented his design and wished all to benefit from its invention.

In 1831 Cyrus McCormick, an American industrialist, invented the mechanical reaper, likely inspired by Bell’s invention. This machinery was pulled by a team of horses and cut crops faster than ever before, and began to be mass-produced.

1884 McCormick Reaper - Probably McCormick Harvester Company advertisement, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Today’s world

Since the Agricultural Revolution, living standards have improved, the global population has exploded, and science and technology have advanced beyond recognition.

But without those bright minds and curious ancestors who put in the hard work and hours of trial and error testing, we would not have the world we enjoy today.