Increased production and productivity in agriculture

Considering its major importance for the pre-industrial economies discussed in this atlas, it is only natural to start a description of changes in their economies with changes in agriculture. Let us first briefly discuss the situation in Western Europe. In the early Middle Ages Europe as a whole was still quite empty. It still had its internal frontiers of lands that were not used to their full potential and its external frontiers of waste and wilderness. Over time, more of the land became settled and the settled land came to be used more intensively. Agriculture experienced several big changes. One was the introduction of the wheeled plough, that came in several forms. The lighter ones that were easily transportable and needed only one draught animal became predominant in Southern Europe, the heavier ones in those parts of Europe that had heavier soils. A second major innovation was the three-field system with its alternating of autumn crops (wheat and rye), spring crops (barley and oats) and fallow. This innovation did not occur in all of Europe. In many parts of Southern, Central and Eastern Europe the two-field system was not abolished. Western Europe's agriculture went through a process of ‘cerealisation’. The work of the farmer and the organisation of the farm became increasingly centred on and subordinated to the growing of grain. In practice, this led to a quite land-extensive type of agriculture with large meadows, pastures and waste lands and substantial parts of arable that lay fallow. Those meadows, pastures and waste lands were used to feed farm animals. Organic materials collected on the waste were used to keep the existing arable land fertile. Leaving arable fallow was done with the same goal in mind. As long as strong animals were needed to work in the fields, in particular for ploughing them, and as long as one had to fall back on manure or other traditional means to make or keep land fertile enough, there continued to be a limit to the amount of land one could use as arable and to the intensity with which one could do that. This has already brought us to the third major change: the extending and more systematic use of animals, initially oxen and, to a lesser extent horses, as sources of labour power.