British Agricultural Revolution

The British Agricultural Revolution describes a period of agricultural development in Britain between the 15th century and the end of the 19th century, which saw an epoch-making increase in agricultural productivity and net output that broke the historical food scarcity cycles. Every continent in the world has experienced a period of famine throughout history. These famines effectively limited the population to what a local territories could sustain over long periods of time including short term shortages. Famines occur when food is unavailable for a period of time usually exceeding a year and the resources: weather, agricultural workers, money, transportation, etc. are not available to get or grow more. Since famines or food shortages are usually "local" affairs the ability to buy and transport food over much longer distances helped minimize the impacts of local crop shortages. The British Agricultural Revolution occurred over a period of several centuries (more of an evolution than a revolution) and was preceded or closely duplicated by many countries in Europe and their colonies. One of the keys to the British Agricultural Revolution was the development of ways of keeping and improving the arable land in Great Britain to counteract the loss of the soil's plant nutrients in cropping a given area. Higher yielding land was added to higher yielding crops with more yield/acre. Farm workers using more productive tools and machinery produced more crops with fewer workers. The Agricultural Revolution picked up speed as the Industrial Revolution and the advances in chemistry produced the scientific knowledge, wealth and technology for a more systematic development of commercial fertilizers and new and more productive agricultural machinery. New crops like potatoes (introduced about 1600), corn, etc. were introduced from the Americas improving the yield/acre of arable land.

The British agricultural revolution, the British Industrial Revolution and Scientific Revolution developed in lock-step. Without increasing amounts of food to feed the increasing city populations the Industrial and Scientific Revolutions could not have proceeded. Without the capital, tools, metals, increased agricultural markets, scientific and technical knowledge generated by the Industrial and Scientific Revolution the Agricultural Revolution would not have been possible. Each so called "Revolution" supported and advanced the other revolutions—they were (and still are) intricately linked together.