Economic Transformation in Food Production

* Enclosure movement of the 1700s

- feudal communal control (manor society) changes to individual ownership

-> from working as a village to divided parcels of land

- common lands (pasture, forest) are stolen or bought up by wealthy/powerful

-> hard to find firewood and places to feed animals

- non-owners are thrown off the land

- increasingly effective control of the land

-> benefits

=> the owner can closely manage the land

=> no one can mess up your land’s productivity (other than yourself)

=> produce of the land benefits the owner

+> greed is a great incentive to increased productivity

-> drawbacks

=> the social safety net of feudal society ripped apart

+> village protected everyone, even if they were less than useful

+> note: similarities to the end of communism

=> if you don’t own land, you see no benefits

=> increasing class inequality (rich very rich, poor very poor)

=> lots of fraud and injustice to gather title to land

+> manors don't just split up land fairly, often cheating and theft

+> note: similarities to the end of communism

- scientific farming explodes

-> having a single proprietor (owner) allows for controlled planting, fertilizing, etc.

-> regular three-field crop rotation the first big change

=> with three-filed rotation, one field is always recovering fertility

=> 2/3 of land is in use

=> the math of the system means higher amount of land in production than two-f

field rotation

-> seed types, planting depths and distances, and watering studied

=> results in a great initial explosion in crop yields

=> relatively quickly levels out until the advent of chemical fertilizer

-> scientific breeding of animals also follows

=> the ability to enclose land allows you to control animal breeding

+> no strangers in the mangers

+> cattle and horse breeds regularized

=> lots of spin-off knowledge of biology for humans (diet, sex, etc.)

* Effects of scientific agriculture

- poor, landless rural people are driven into the cities

-> thrown off their land, they migrate to urban areas in search of food and jobs

-> creates a source of relatively free labor for factories to exploit

- food surplus abounds from increasingly productive farms

-> allows more big cities to grow (other than just a capital)

-> plenty of food to feed factory workers

-> surpluses give farmers access to markets and cash

=> they have money to pay for products

=> increasingly specializing in farming, farmers turn to purchasing previously

home-produced goods

+> a market for city-produced cloth, candles, forks, etc.

- sudden and massive population growth

-> humans begin the stunning population growth in which we now live

=> the food ceiling removed from population

=> creates the Malthusian problem (see reading)

- environmental destruction

-> massive deforestation to expand crop land

-> loss of top soil due to more intensive farming and plowing

-> selective breeding and more regularly plowed open fields breed "better" weeds

and pests accidentally

=> lack of genetic and geographic diversity of crops allows pests to "specialize"

and weeds to gain footholds

-> intensive use of fertilizers begins to be a source of water pollution