British Agricultural Revolution - Advances That Helped The Agriculture Revolution

Advances That Helped The Agriculture Revolution

Very few people will work harder or smarter if their work or income can arbitrarily be seized by those in power. One of the keys to the British Agricultural Revolution was the traditional restricted role of kings and the so-called "aristocrats" as exemplified by a long legal tradition going back to at least the signing of the Magna Carta by King John of England in 1217. The British Agricultural Revolution relied in large part on the establishment of a democratic government that used Parliament-passed laws, English Common law, the established Courts with Judicial independence and the rule of law to protect life, liberty and property in England, Wales, Scotland, etc. Empowering the farmers, investors, inventors and businessman was accomplished by increasingly and successfully restricting the power the Pope and the king and the so-called "aristocracy" had in England. King Henry VIII of England separated the Church of England from the often repressive rule of the Pope and the Roman Catholic Church and its many bishops, clerics, Ecclesiastical courts, etc. in 1535. In the English Civil War (1640–1649) the Parliamentarians under Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) defeated and executed the king, Charles I of England, and abolished about 700 king granted monopolies. After 1660 when King Charles II of England (1630–1685) was restored and then again after 1685 when King James II of England came to power there was an on-going battle between king and the English Parliament. This was resolved in the Parliament's favor in 1688 when the Catholic Stuart King James II of England was forced to flee for his life to France. At the end the Glorious Revolution in 1688, the new king and queen, William and Mary agreed to abolish nearly all remaining monopolies and signed the English Bill of Rights 1689 and eliminated the hearth tax marking a new level co-operation and power sharing between the Parliament and the English monarchs. All of these processes led to a greater measure of legal protection for life, liberty, and property in England that encouraged and empowered the middle class at the beginning of the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 signaled the lessening of several centuries of tension and conflict between the crown and parliament, and the end of the idea that English kings had any divine rights and that England, etc. would be restored to Roman Catholicism. The new King William III and his wife Mary II were Protestant leaders from the Dutch Republic that were invited by Parliament to rule England. To make up for the loss of tax revenue, due to the cancellation of the hearth tax, uniform property taxes were imposed with few exclusions.

With legal assurances that their property and work would not be arbitrarily confiscated without legal proceedings by the king, the so-called "nobility", church or anybody else investors and inventors could secure capital to invest or use sweat equity to build improved farms or make other improvements. All realized some taxes were necessary to maintain law and order, pay for a government bureaucracy, tax collectors, monarchy, an Army and a Navy, post office system, and protect life, liberty and property by running an independent court system. Surprisingly, the government was run with an average tax rate of about 10% of GDP with taxes rising to about 20% of GDP in the Seven Years' War, American Revolutionary War and the Napoleonic Wars and then receding back to about 10% when the war bonds, loans etc. were paid off. Private investors financed and built transportation systems like sailing ships, paddle steamers (after 1830), steam ships (after 1860), refrigerator ships (after 1890), toll roads (after 1700), canals (after 1760), railroads (after 1830) allowed people, goods, foods and animal crops to be gathered and shipped cheaply and with increasing rapidity over ever increasing distances. New food preservation techniques like canning (after 1800), refrigeration (after 1880) as well as traditional food storage techniques like root cellars, granaries, etc. were improved. These allowed more food to be stored over longer periods of time and minimized the impact of local shortages.

Ever increasing literacy, spread in large part by the Protestant Reformation and its pressure to read and study the Bible in English, was well spread in England and even broader in Scotland. Public pressure and public and private funding were used to try and teach more and more males and some females to read, write and cipher. The fraction of the populace educated continually increased with about 30% of all males at least semi literate by 1630, rising to 60% by 1730 and 65% by 1830 before reaching 90% in 1900. English women literate rates were about 10% by 1700, 35% by 1800 and increasing to 90+% by 1900. Cheap and wide spread "How-To" books made possible by Johannes Gutenberg's invention of the printing press (1438) and the numerous and wide spread low cost books and other literature that were made available. Increased literacy led to increased (uncensored) printing of books magazines and newspapers to satisfy a growing demand. Information on successful new agricultural techniques, scientific discoveries, inventions, prices and information of surpluses and shortages were spread faster and over much wider territories by the wide availability of cheap (compared to hand copied) books, magazines and newspapers.

New scientific discoveries found by Sir Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin and many others were increasingly added to the school curriculum and studied by an increasingly widening student body. New technologies like the telegraph (after 1830) and the telephone (after 1880) greatly improved the speed and flow of information needed to keep up with prices, shortages and surpluses to know which crops to buy, ship or grow. New crop rotation systems involving turnips and clover (plus others) made it less necessary to have so much land lie fallow. New crops had more yield per acre and new improved livestock that could be fed though the winters gave larger yields of meat. Larger drives of livestock from Ireland, Wales and Scotland increased the available meat supply available to be purchased in the ever increasing cities. New irrigation systems called water meadows allowed longer growing seasons on pasture land and increased yield from hay fields allowing more animals to be raised. Improved use and new fertilizers in addition to "manure" helped maintain and improve the arable land or reclaim formerly "waste" land. These improvements and new crops in turn supported unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped drive the Industrial Revolution.

The Bank of England (founded 1694) helped the farmers get and use the capital (raised from other investors) needed to buy farm improvements and herds of livestock. A good financial system was needed to put capital investments back into the farms and livestock operations. Since it was much more economical to use a few herders as reasonable to bring herds of livestock the long distances from Ireland, Wales and Scotland to England for fattening and/or slaughter accumulating the money to buy these herds was much facilitated by a workable banking system. The wealth (capital) earned by the workers in the Industrial Revolution in turn allowed these workers to buy and pay for more agricultural farm and livestock production. The Industrial Revolution also made many things much cheaper so the farmers could purchase more extensive wardrobes, metal tools, new machines, etc. with the same earnings. The much cheaper textile manufacturing brought about by the Industrial Revolution made available cheap washable cotton underwear that improved personal hygiene and slowed down the spread of gastrointestinal diseases like cholera etc.

There were large variations in the location and time different agricultural innovations were introduced in the many different agricultural zones in Britain and the rest of the world. Advances in science, engineering and elementary botany encouraged the progression of the Agricultural Revolution in Britain and elsewhere. More professional farm management, more capital investment, better agricultural education, improved fertilizations, new improved crops or higher yield, mechanization of farm work from oxen, horses, steam power and then gasoline or diesel power, four-field crop rotation, and selective breeding of livestock for larger size and other desirable characteristics have been highlighted as important links to the Agricultural revolution.

Increased understanding of the important chemicals need for proper plant nutrition allowed new fertilizers to be imported and made. Eventually the establishment of a chemical fertilizer industry made it possible to restore the chemicals lost in growing crops to maintain the needed enhanced food plant growth.

New agricultural equipment like cultivators, plows, threshers, mowers, combines, balers, etc. were invented and powered by oxen, horses, steam power, then gasoline or diesel as the farm machinery became mechanized and allowed the farmers to become ever more productive. The farm transportation system moved from pack animals to carts and wagons pulled by oxen, to mules or horses to trucks (after about 1915).

As the Industrial Revolution picked up speed in the early 1800s the metal technologies, power sources, metal working skills, monetary systems, investors, capital, etc. became available for agricultural continuation and improvement. Early successes led to ever increasing innovative agricultural machinery and labor saving devices. The percentage of the population in agricultural work decreased from about 80% in the 1300s to less than 2% today (in the developed world) as the agricultural "revolution" continues.