“Crops and Agricultural Developments in Western Europe”
One of the problems we meet when we are discussing “agriculture” today is that in the last 150 years, our idea of what the word means has changed beyond recognition. The term “agricultural revolution” has been put to much too many uses (and misuses). But what resulted from the development of machines, fertilizers, genetically selected crops and pesticides in Europe and North America from the middle of the 19th century on can properly be named a revolution. Yields have increased about ten times, and labour productivity by a factor 100 to 1000, according to the task concerned. Nothing like that is recorded from any other period in the past. True, assessing yields for older times is a rather tricky business. But the orders of magnitude are pretty well known. Figures given by Roman agricultural writers in the two last centuries B.C. are not very different from those known from 18th century sources, so it would be possible to assume that nothing really important did happen in between. Of course, it is not quite true. There were many changes. But there were also many things that did not change. The main difficulty is to draw a fair pictures of both, never forgetting that non-changes may be as significant and important as changes.
▻http://www.francois-sigaut.com/index.php/publications-diverses/publications/12-articles-fond/326-2013d
#histoire_de_l'agriculture #agriculture #semences #foin #évolution #changement
