The British Agricultural Revolution describes a period of
development in Britain between the 18th century and the end of
the 19th century, which saw a massive increase in agricultural
productivity and net output. This in turn supported
unprecedented population growth, freeing up a significant
percentage of the workforce, and thereby helped drive the
Industrial Revolution. How this came about is not entirely
clear. In recent decades, enclosure, mechanization, four-field
crop rotation, and selective breeding have been highlighted as
primary causes, with credit given to relatively few individuals.
Prior to the 18th century, agriculture had been much the same
across Europe since the Middle Ages. The open field system was
essentially post-feudal, with each farmer subsistence-cropping
strips of land in one of three or four large fields held in
common and splitting up the products likewise. Beginning as
early as the 12th century, some of the common fields in Britain
were enclosed into individually owned fields, and