Agricultural revolution

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A period of rapid change in agriculture, usually associated with increases in output. One such change took place during the Agricultural Revolution (although the timing and use of this term is disputed) in England from 1750 onwards, when the use of rotations, nitrogen-fixing crops, such as legumes and clover, and mixed farming with manuring caused output to rise. These changes were helped by major reforms in land tenure; large ‘common’ fields were divided and much common land was fenced during the enclosures of the eighteenth century. Technology also improved, with new machinery for sowing, harvesting, and threshing.

The green revolution is an example of a more modern agricultural revolution.

Ten to twelve thousand years ago, what has been called the agricultural revolution began to alter completely almost every aspect of human life and religious history. By six thousand years ago its results were seen in some of the oldest cities in the world. In Jericho, perhaps the oldest continually inhabited city in existence, and Ur, purported to be the home of Abraham and the Hapiru (See Abraham), complex lifestyles developed when people discovered both the blessings and curses resulting from a fixed, stable home.

The agricultural revolution marks the beginning of what we now call civilization or recorded history. When people discovered the benefits of cultivation and a predictable food source, the results were dramatic. In Mesopotamia and Egypt, populations exploded as large crops farmed by few people could support larger families and communities. Cities evolved as more people settled in one place. This shift led to specialization of occupations and the beginning of formal political and economic systems. As one city traded with another, the invention of writing made it possible both to communicate and keep track of wealth.

But there was a dark side to this revolution. Stored wealth invited the temptation to manipulate the food supply. The "haves" grew to dominate the "have-nots." Social class stratas inevitably followed. Competition over the best fields and the pressure of overcrowding led to warfare between cities. The drudgery of the field replaced the sport of the hunt. The drawbacks were accepted, however, because of the utility and obvious advantage of a reliable food supply.

The agricultural revolution led to significant changes in world religions. Wars and armies tended to encourage the concept of male, warlike, tribal gods, capable of defending cities and cultures, rather than the female mother-earth goddesses of pastoral peoples. Gods such as Baal of the Canaanites and Jehovah of the Israelites tended to require more and bloodier sacrifices to prove their superiority over the gods of other indigenous people. Specialization of occupations led to professional clergy, along with the temples and traditional styles of worship inherent in formal religions. The invention of writing led to organized, systematic scriptures. Once beliefs were written down, they tended to become codified, in contrast to the fluid, evolving patterns of oral mythology. Written scriptures also tended to follow analytical patterns of thought, departing from the imaginative, intuitive patterns of oral culture. Over time, religions tended to become increasingly hierarchical and dominated by men.

These changes did not happen right away. But by 4000 bce, in the Tigris/ Euphrates and Nile River valleys, the agricultural revolution was undeniably underway.

Biblical historian Daniel Quinn has made the case that a description of the process can be found in the third and fourth chapters of Genesis and is a part of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Here, Adam and Eve, having left the delights of the traditional gathering lifestyle they knew in the Garden of Eden, are now forced to earn their food by the drudgery of work in the field. Their son Cain, the new agriculturist, presents an offering from his garden to the traditional God of his parents. It is rejected in favor of the traditional sacrifice of his brother Abel, the pastoral herdsman. A revolution breaks out between the old tradition of pastoral migration and the new style of agricultural independence. Agriculture wins. Cain kills his brother. But he is driven from the presence of the old God, the old way of doing things. The implication is that he must find a new God, one who accepts the modern lifestyle.

The first thing Cain does is build a city, and his descendants proceed to develop not only agriculture, but also the industry of Tubal-Cain, the bronze-age forger, and the music of Jubal, "the father of all who play the harp and flute." Also at this time Lamech marries two women and vows vengeance on anyone who injures him. As humankind experiences a population explosion, corruption and violence grow so severe that God finally decides to destroy everything with a great flood. Thus, way back in the early chapters of Genesis, we read about urban development, agriculture, the growth of industry, the music business, bigamy and adultery, revenge, population explosion, corruption, violence, and natural disaster. Seen in this way, it reads like a modern-day morning newspaper.

In the biblical account, this is all placed about six thousand years ago in Mesopotamia, precisely when and where the agricultural revolution was changing the world. So when conservative scholars of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic belief say that the world began six to ten thousand years ago, perhaps they might more accurately say that the world of modern civilization, or written history, began at that time.

Whether Genesis contains the remembered oral record of human history is, of course, a matter of interpretation and religious belief. But the agricultural revolution has undoubtedly led to the way of life we now take for granted. Male-dominated hierarchical religious systems did tend to overcome goddess-based religious traditions as civilization spread. Leaders of wars even today use the tribal terminology of "our God against your God," a practice as old as that used by conflicting cities six thousand years ago as they fought for natural resources. Overcrowded cities and population centers are still recognized as hotbeds of crime and violence.

Sources: Ellwood, Robert S., and Barbara A. McGraw. Many Peoples, Many Faiths. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1999. May, Herbert G., and Bruce M. Metzger, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael. New York: Bantam/Turner Books, 1995.

This was traditionally regarded as taking place simultaneously with the industrial revolution, and involving the introduction of new crop rotations in which roots and artificial crops were cultivated, improvements in livestock breeding, and the reorganization of land as a result of parliamentary enclosure. These changes were held to have raised the productivity of land in such a way that the population was fed (with some help from imports) without resort to massive labour inputs which would have slowed down the industrial revolution by restricting the flow of labour from the countryside to the town. Without doubt the end results deduced by this argument are correct. Food supply did more or less keep pace with population andurbanization. By 1850 an estimated 6.5 million extra mouths were being fed from home production compared with 1750. However, questions have been raised about the nature, and particularly the timing, of the agricultural revolution.

Modern understanding of the agricultural revolution sees it loosely as a three-stage, overlapping, process. The first phase, completed by c.1750-70, saw two developments: first, the introduction of new crops, particularly root crops such as turnips and swedes, which could be grown between grain crops; and second, a considerable rise in the productivity of labour. As a result of these changes less land needed to be left fallow, additional animal feedstuffs were grown, and greater quantities (and quality) of manure became available.

During the second phase, lasting from around 1750 to 1830, demand increased rapidly. In this period the slack in the agricultural economy which had been partly taken up by grain exports disappeared and by the early 19th cent. an import balance existed. The reorganization of the land through enclosure and the gradual growth of larger farms, brought a slow rise in productivity, and a growing trend towards regional specialization. Norfolk farmers had pioneered the cultivation of clover in England, but it was only after 1740 that the principal benefits of the new crop were felt.

The third phase, beginning in about 1830, and sometimes called the second agricultural revolution, saw for the first time farmers using substantial inputs purchased off their farms, in the form of fertilizers for their land and artificial feedstuffs for their animals. Together with the introduction of improved methods of drainage, the results were seen in the era of high farming between the 1840s and 1870s, which soon gave way to a severe and prolonged agricultural depression. In Scotland the agricultural revolution took a rather different form. Although, as in England, there has been a tendency to view it as a long-term change, it is now thought that, at least in the Lowlands, this underplays the transformation which occurred in the second half of the 18th cent. A rapid move towards single tenancies and production for the market was partly stimulated by the pace of population growth, and particularly of urbanization (notably Glasgow and Edinburgh) in the second half of the 18th cent.

The result, in the second half of the 18th cent., was seen in the adoption of new technologies and crops, a shift to long leases with improving clauses written in, and higher productivity. Many of the existing farmers adapted to the new demands upon them, so that there was no Lowland equivalent of the Highland clearances. Overall the result was a radical departure from the patterns of the past in the last quarter of the 18th cent., not simply measured in terms of physical enclosure, but also in the more effective use of land involving liming, sown grasses, and the organization of labour. It was a structural change, and not simply an intensification of existing trends, since it produced a dramatic increase in crop yields, allowing Scottish cultivators to catch up on English levels of output within a few decades.

Look up agricultural revolution in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Agricultural Revolution or Agrarian Revolution may refer to:

• The Neolithic Revolution (around 10,000 BP), the initial transition from hunting and gathering to settled agriculture in prehistory
• The Arab Agricultural Revolution (8th–13th centuries), a term coined by the historian Andrew Watson postulating a fundamental transformation in agriculture arising from the diffusion of crops through the Islamic world
• The British Agricultural Revolution (17th–19th centuries), an increase in agricultural productivity in Great Britain which helped drive the Industrial Revolution
• The Scottish Agricultural Revolution (18th–19th centuries), the British Agricultural Revolution in Scotland specifically, which led to the Lowland Clearances
• The Green Revolution (1943–late 1970s), a series of research, development, and technology transfer initiatives that increased industrialized agriculture production in India and other countries in the developing world

Agrarian Revolution may also refer to:

• The period 1927–1937 in the Chinese Civil War

See also

• Land reform
• Collective farming

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