Turnips and clover helped feed the workforce of the Industrial Revolution
Between 1700 and 1850, each British farm labourer came to produce about two and a half times as much food. Humble turnips and clover, planted where fields once lay idle, did much of the work. Fewer hands on the land meant more workers for the factories, which is why historians call this revolution an enabler of industrialisation.
The core trick was the Norfolk four-course rotation. Instead of leaving a field fallow to recover, farmers cycled wheat, barley, turnips and clover. Deep-rooted turnips drew up nutrients shallow crops could not reach and grew through winter, and clover pulled nitrogen out of the air into the soil. Both fed livestock, so more animals survived the winter, producing more meat, milk and manure, which in turn fertilised the fields. Fallow shrank from about 20% of England's arable land in 1700 to roughly 4% by 1900.
Better tools helped too. The Dutch had acquired from China a curved, iron-tipped plough that one or two oxen could pull, compared with the six or eight needed for the heavy northern European plough. Dutch contractors draining East Anglian fens brought it to Britain, and Joseph Foljambe patented an iron-plated version in 1730; by the 1760s his factory near Rotherham was turning them out from standard patterns, and by 1770 no plough on the market was better or cheaper. Enclosure, which ended common rights and created privately held farms, made the new rotations possible, since the old open fields let neighbours' animals graze any turnips planted there.
The results showed in people. England and Wales held 5.5 million people in 1700 and more than 9 million by 1801. Wheat harvests per acre climbed by roughly a quarter across the 1700s, then by almost half again during the following century. As the population kept climbing past 35 million, though, Britain increasingly relied on imported food.
Whether it was a single revolution is disputed. The historian G. E. Mingay described several agricultural revolutions spread across four centuries. Dutch historians argue the Netherlands got there first: between 1500 and 1650 Dutch output per farm worker rose by 80%, and exiled English landowners later carried Dutch methods home.
Source: British Agricultural Revolution
