Agricultural shows were also popular use of spreading ideas at this time, as they showed all new ideas to do with animals, machinery and crops. Thomas Coke was one man that helped promoted these new ideas through agricultural shows. Farmers would come to the shows and learn of the new techniques and ideas, and try them on there own farms.
Other than books, magazines were also set up to help spread ideas at this time. One man to do this was called Arthur Young. He wrote many books on farming and started his own magazine called Annals of Agriculture. Due to the growing interest in farming, the government set up a board of Agriculture and Young was appointed as secretary. George III also tried to help spread the ideas of the farming improvers by writing articles in Young’s magazine under the name Ralph Robinson.
Many people went on tours of the county too, to talk to the poor people, that could not read the magazines or books, and who couldn’t go to see the model farms. Between 1793 and 1820 Young went and spoke in person to people, and he was very good at persuading people.
1. b. Explain why it was necessary to produce more food by the end of the 18th century? (6)
With the industrial revolution, more people were moving to the bigger towns`` in search of work. In between 1750-1900 there was a huge change in the population distribution, e.g. in 1750 75% of people lived and worked in rural society but by 1900, that was 25% and vice versa. This meant there were fewer farmers and more people who needed to buy food.
In the boom years when labourers had more money, parents had had more babies. Because the average person’s diet was improving, more of these babies had survived, and so those babies were now young men and women, just at the time when work was hard to find. In 1760 it was 6.3 million in England, but by 1801 it was 9.3 million.
Because of the movement to the towns, there were less people growing, but more people demanding. Farmers increased prices and grew more food.
The farming methods of this time were also very wasteful. Most people, at this time, were still using the Open Field System. This was a very wasteful system because of the amount of land that wasted. The rotation of the fields meant that by having one field lay fallow every year, a third of the farmers land was wasted and did nothing, meaning that the produce was smaller by one third.
Because there weren’t any barriers, the animals could graze over the different fields, and onto which ever piece of land they wanted, causing many crops to be damaged or eaten.
Also in the years before hand, there had been a run of bad harvests, so the amount of food around was smaller than expected, making the amount of food proportioned smaller.
1. c. The effects of introducing Enclosure were good. Do you agree? Explain your answer. (10)
I think that the effects of enclosure were good in the long run, but the effects short term were not good for the poor especially.
Because of the layout of the Open Field System, it was very hard to try out new ideas. This meant that there was not much room for development, but with enclosure, farmers could try new methods like the Threashing Machine, invented by Andrew Mickle in 1786.
Land owners and large tenant farmers did well out of enclosure, for example they could try selective breading which would give them fatter and healthier animals. Selective breeding was developed by Robert Bakewell (1725-1793), and the Colling brothers. They were from County Durham and adopted Robert Bakewell’s ideas and developed another breed called Shortham cattle.
As a result of these changes, food production increased and this made the larger farmers very rich. However it was also good for the growing population as they would get fed and the new industrial towns would grow.
