Agricultural Revolution

A period in Great Britain when new crops were grown, better animals were bred and new farming materials were introduced.  

The Agricultural Revolution 

From the perspective of Jessica G., a farmer

            The Agricultural Revolution sure has been a revolution[1]! The population between year 1600 and 1900 has just about doubled, so farmers have had to take on the challenge of feeding and clothing billions more people. To be able to do this, we had to make our working methods more efficient, increase our amount of harvest, and improve our crops. We have accomplished doing that! What do we get in return for it? Nothing! The Industrial Revolution has been good, not great, and that revolution gets a huge Crystal Palace[2]! There have been many new machines invented, and we have thought up many new ideas! All this has happened from the 1700’s onward. There were a lot of different machines made, but only a few earned our praise. It is hard to make a machine that reaps fields all by itself. The idea about crop rotation quickly took over fallow fields. It was a good idea because it made my soil better even with those turnips and clovers growing in it. A fallow field is where two of your three fields are growing crops, and your other field is renewing its soil. Crop rotation[3] is where you have all three fields growing crops, except one of the fields had turnips and clovers growing in it, which fertilizes the soil. Using the idea of crop rotation takes hard work and patience! Before I used crop rotation, I looked at that empty field, thinking, in a year it will come in handy, but there has to be a better way to make the soil regenerate. Even with all of these advances in farming technology, people wouldn’t give farmers much praise! The Industrial Revolution definitely did not advance as much as Agricultural Revolution did.

            Many machines were created to make harvesting and planting more efficient. Usually at a harvest, everybody helps in the fields. Even the very youngest and oldest of the community had their own jobs in the big event. This is community work. Everybody who works gets all they need of food, and there is still food to sell to the open market. Farmers never make anybody do all of the work! This job usually took days – until a wonderful machine that reaps so much on a day was invented. Inventors turned their attention towards the harvests, for they needed to become more efficient. Soon, reaping machines[4] were invented. A group of five farmers could reap a whole hectare a day. A successful man named McCormick sold about 4,000 reapers in a year! You couldn’t sell that many of the Industrial Revolution’s trains in a year even if you gave them away! Planting seeds was also very time consuming. A farmer named Jethro Tull invented the successful seed drill[5]. It has come in handy on my farm, because it makes everything easier to do on the farm. It is pulled by a horse, using a spring-loaded flap to control the flow the flow of seed in the soil.  Farmers definitely deserve some praise! The industrial revolution has all of these articles in the newspaper, and it seems like there is no attention turned toward farmers these days. All of the machines invented were very useful, though, in speeding up the process of farming.