This chapter considers the status and shape of georgic in early seventeenth-century England in the context of two questions that georgic writers asked themselves repeatedly during this period: first, do farmers work on account of a commitment to virtue and community, or because of competition and self-interest? Second, should farmers aim to uphold customary practices in the fields, or seek ways to innovate and as a result transform the agrarian landscape? The period considered here – roughly, the reign in England of James I (1603-25) – was shaped by fundamental debates about the values of the land and the lives of those who owned and worked it. And poets had to consider quite how the resources of georgic related to these upheavals.