1. The Industrial Revolution
Agricultural Revolution
Why did it start in England?
The Growth of the Cottage Industry
The Industrial Revolution

2. Agricultural Revolution
15th and 18th
Century Farming
- 1st Picture: Peasants ranking and cutting hay in the 15th Century
2nd Picture: Farming Methods in Early 18th Century
Very little change
Common land still unenclosed and outside the village in the 18th century
Economy of Europe was agrarian
Used the three-field system: 1/3 of the land left idle to restore fertility

3. The Open-field System Cooperative plowing
Conserved the quality of land
Balanced distribution of good land
Farmers were part of a “team”
Gleaning
The Open-field System:
- England was divided into a number of fields which surrounded a village
- 1/3 left fallow
- further divided into rectangular sections called furlongs
-Furlongs were divided into narrow 1 acre strips
- Certain pasture and forest were set aside as common land

4. Enclosure Before AFTER
Each landowner received a single piece of property
No common lands

5. Large Land Owners (Benefited)
Had the political strength to pass the enclosure law
Owned large unified farms under this system
Farming was more efficient
Didn’t need consent of the village to experiment with new crop methods

6. Small Farmers Forced off Their Land
Had to pay for :
Required fencing
A team of oxen
Could no longer glean or gather wood
Often had to sell plots to large landowners:
Forced to Rent or
Work for someone else
Increasing the # of men looking for work

7. The Seed Drill (1700) Planted seed in neat rows
Improved germination by making furrow, dropping seed into them, and covering them
Reduced amount of seed used in planting

8. Additional Machines Horse-drawn cultivator – Jethro Tull
Cast-iron plow (1797) – American Charles Newbold
Reaper – Englishman Joseph Boyce (1799) and American Cyrus McCormic (1834)
Self-cleaning steel plow – John Deere(1837)
Thresher – separated grain from stalk
Harvester – cut and bind grain
Combine - cut, thresh, and sack grain
Tractor – pulled equipment through the field
Corn planter
Potato digger
Electric milker
Cotton picker

9. Scientific Agriculture
Crop Rotation
English gentleman farmer Viscount Charles “Turnip” Townsend
Alternating grain crops: wheat and barley, with soil enriching crops: turnips and clovers.
No longer had to leave land fallow
Scientific Breeding
Selective breeding of animals
Produced more and better animals
Produced more milk and meat
Leciestershire breed of sheep
Increased weight of marketed cattle

10. Selective Breeding? Some farmers such as Robert
Bakewell and the Culley
brothers concentrated on selective breeding.
This meant only allowing the fittest and strongest of their
cattle, sheep, pigs and horses to mate.
You can tell how successful they were:
In 1710 the average weight for cattle was
168 (370 lbs) Kg by it was 363 (805 lbs) Kg
Today – 1600 lbs
Find pictures of the animals they bred – do they look healthy by today’s standards, what does it tell us about how they thought of their achievements that they had portraits painted.

11. Effects
The number of farmers, in proportion to total population, decreased sharply
Many farmers moved to the cities
The population of cities increased rapidly
Farmers found their work less difficult because machines performed the back breaking labor
Farming changed from a self-sufficient way of life to big business
Agricultural production increased
Cost of foodstuffs dropped
Increased production of food resulted in part, in a rapid growth of population
Large farms, using machines and scientific methods, began to dominate agriculture
Number of small farms began to decline