The Day the Universe Changed - James Burke [83]
The frontispiece of a bestselling book on the proper use of clover.
By the beginning of the eighteenth century turnips were commonplace. The story that they were introduced from abroad by ‘Turnip’ Townshend is now regarded as a myth. Townshend was supposed to have brought the ‘rare seed’ from Hanover. In fact turnips had never been grown there, while elsewhere the seed was common.
Another plant was to prove equally important to the economic growth of the country. Its presence in England is attested by the introduction of a new phrase into the language: ‘to be in clover’, or to be doing well out of the profit derived from the increasing use of the plant to fertilise the soil. By the last quarter of the seventeenth century clover was being grown as an alternative to peas and beans. The idea had originally come from Holland, where clover was used to help in land reclamation. With the use of these crops, and artificial grasses like ryegrass, it became possible to turn heath into arable land in a relatively short time.
By 1720 the new agricultural crops had changed the way the land was used. The multiple crop system was introduced in Norfolk. In the eastern part of the county most of the fields were small and there was a need to spread the turnips evenly over the whole farm, so the fields were split in groups of six for use on a shift system. Each shift would include one or two fields sown in sequence with wheat, barley, turnips, barley with ryegrass or clover, ryegrass and clover mixed and finally summer fallow of ryegrass and clover. No field missed its shift with the turnip or the summer fallow. The system was not applied everywhere, only to the selected groups of shift fields. Any field under the shift system could always be brought under regular crop cultivation on occasions when there was danger of general crop failure.
The system was extremely flexible. Crop rotation was applied to the whole farm and consisted of changes from arable to grass in sequences such as turnip, barley, clover and wheat followed by turnip, oats, clover and wheat followed by fallow, turnip, wheat and clover followed by wheat, barley, turnips and clover.
At the same time advances were being made in the use of fertiliser. There was better marling, or additions of limestone and clay, and increased use of lime, sand and compost. The saying went: ‘A man doth sand for himself, lime for his son, and marl for his grandchild.’ The ground also benefited from the major advantage of enclosure as healthy animals were moved from field to field, to eat off the fallow fields and drop manure on the sown land.
This revolution in agriculture increased interest in making land profitable. It also provided the farm-workers with a diet that stands up well to modern comparison. At the end of the seventeenth century it is reckoned that compared with the modern poor in times of depression, the farm-worker availed himself of ten times the iron and calcium, five times the Vitamin B complex, six times the Vitamin C, more D and adequate E. He also consumed more fat and calories. The weekly total of food consumed per person was a peck of wheat (a peck was a measure that held two gallons), beer containing seven-tenths of a peck of barley, several pounds of bacon and meat, a quarter of a pound of cheese, a little fruit, spice, salt, oats, hops and plenty of eggs and game. The diet equalled the average modern middle-class diet and in some instances was superior.
Various aspects of plant and animal care illustrated in a late seventeenth-century manual on husbandry.
Much of this abundance of food was due to the fact that more crops were being produced from the same seed. Prior to the improvements a 5:1 yield from wheat seed could be expected. The new system doubled the ratio. In the case of barley seed, the improvements quadrupled yield. Corn and grass yields doubled. By the beginning of