2 - Farming in the sixteenth century

Summary

An understanding of the rural world of early modern England must start with the activity that occupied most of the population: the practical business of farming. This chapter begins with a description of farming operations and considers the constraints farmers faced in attempting to maintain or increase their output of crops and livestock. Farming was not a uniform activity, so some of the differences between farming enterprises are discussed in terms of their products, labour requirements, income flows and relations with the market. The chapter then investigates the land being farmed in terms of patterns of ownership and rights to property. The next section moves from farms to farmers, looking at their social status, and at their social and economic relationships within the local community. Finally, the chapter explores the relationships between these various elements of the rural economy within the context of a framework of rural regions.

Farming

Five hundred years ago English farmers grew four major cereal crops: wheat, rye, barley and oats, together with the pulse crops of peas and beans; they also kept cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. Although these crops and livestock are kept by farmers today, cereal crops have been changed dramatically by plant breeding during the twentieth century, and livestock characteristics have been transformed by selective breeding. During the last five centuries sugar beet, potatoes, rape, turnips and swedes amongst others have been added to the sixteenth-century list of crops, although all but sugar beet were introduced in the three centuries before 1850.