Page 10 - Introduction to Agriculture by: Aqleem Abbas

Introduction to Agriculture Notes prepared by: Aqleem Abbas

The nature of agriculture there and in other regions was to change considerably in succeeding centuries. Several reasons can be
identified for this trend. Europe was cut off from Asia and the Middle East by an extension of Ottoman power. New economic
theories were put into practice, directly affecting agriculture. Continued wars between England and France, within each of these
countries, and in Germany consumed capital and human resources.

A new period of global exploration and colonization was undertaken to circumvent the Ottoman Empire’s control of the spice
trade, to provide homes for religious refugees, and to provide new resources for European nations convinced that only precious
metals constituted wealth.

Colonial agriculture was intended not only to feed the colonists but also to produce cash crops and to supply food for the home
country. This meant cultivation of such crops as sugar, cotton, tobacco, and tea, and production of animal products such as wool
and hides.

From the 15th to the 19th century the slave trade provided laborers needed to fill the large workforce required by colonial
plantations. Many early slaves replaced indigenous peoples who died from diseases carried by the colonists or were killed by
hard agricultural labor to which they were unaccustomed. Slaves from Africa worked, for example, on sugar plantations in the
Caribbean region and on indigo and cotton plantations in what would become the southern United States. Native Americans were
virtually enslaved in Mexico. Indentured slaves from Europe, especially from the prisons of Great Britain, provided both skilled
and unskilled labor to many colonies. Both slavery and serfdom were substantially wiped out in the 19th century. See Peonage;
Plantation; Slavery.

When encountered by the Spanish conquistadors, the more advanced Native Americans in the New World—the Aztec , Inca, and
Maya—already had intensive agricultural economies, but no draft or riding animals and no wheeled vehicles. Squash, beans,
peas, and corn had long since been domesticated. Land was owned by clans and other kinship groups or by ruling tribes that had
formed sophisticated governments, but not by individuals or individual families. Several civilizations had risen and fallen in
Central and South America by the 16th century.

The scientific revolution resulting from the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment in Europe encouraged experimentation in
agriculture as well as in other fields. Trial-and-error efforts in plant breeding produced improved crops, and a few new strains of
cattle and sheep were developed. Notable was the Guernsey cattle breed, which is still a heavy milk producer. Land enclosure
was increasingly practiced in the 18th century, enabling individual landowners to determine the disposition of cultivated land and
pasture that previously had been subject to common use.

Crop rotation, involving alternation of legumes with grain, was more readily practiced outside the village strip system inherited
from the manorial period. In England, where scientific farming was most efficient, enclosure brought about a fundamental
reorganization of land ownership. From 1660 large landowners had begun to add to their properties, frequently at the expense of
small independent farmers. By the mid-19th century the agricultural pattern was based on the relationship between the
landowner, dependent on rents; the farmer, producer of crops; and the landless laborer, the hired hand of American farming lore.
Drainage brought more land into cultivation, and, with the Industrial Revolution, farm machinery was introduced.

It is not possible to fix a clear decade or series of events as the start of the agricultural revolution through technology. Among the
important advances were the purposeful selective breeding of livestock, begun in the early 1700s, and the spreading of limestone
on farm soils in the late 1700s. Mechanical improvements in the traditional wooden plow began in the mid-1600s with small iron