It’s difficult to comprehend all of the tiny improvements in knowledge that, accumulated over time, can lead to such a drastic improvement in food output.
We went from barely having enough to feed a few million people, to comfortably feeding 8 billion. There is room for improvement, but with current demographic trends, we may not ever need to feed more than 10 billion.
Yes, very interesting to think about how this developed technically and geographically.
Possible typo?: "The Brabant plow ... turns the soil to the left, while the other turns it to the left." [right?]
Are there 30 horses in that top picture (5 rows of 6 across?), plus 5 to 7 men on the carriage, with maybe a follow on wagon of some sort?? 30 HP!! Corralling and arranging all of that would come close to a small factory operation by itself. Presumably keeping horses was still easier and cheaper than finding labor on a flexible schedule? Mostly need open fields (partly fallowing?) and/or access to hay/oats, etc. ?? I would also guess that neighbors worked together sharing horses and related assets to some degree to work the larger farms and manage some of the bigger implements?
It also occurs to me that perhaps part of why America led the way is our settling of wide open spaces and the settler's comfort level in living and transporting and traveling over greater distances than were common in Europe. Also, the land was not yet chopped up into 5 to 100 acre parcels? Then again, 6 mile square townships were commonly platted, right? And the earliest transfers to Australia, Canada, and Argentina would have occurred there for similar reasons.
Yes, hitching up the horses for these farm implements must have been quite an operation. I am not sure how ownership of the horses typically worked, but horses were incredibly useful. Not only could they do much of the farm work, but they also were critical for transporting the agricultural product to cities or to the nearest rail head.
>By the late 19th Century virtually every step in grain farming (and many other types of agriculture) had been mechanized. And it is important to realize that all of this occurred before the application of steam engines and internal combustion engine powered tractors. Virtually all of these devices were powered by horse, mule, or hand cranks.
Thanks for this -- I really didn't have much appreciation for this fact. I think for a lot of us Americans, for whom the John Deere tractor is as classic as apple pie, our first instinct is to assume that if a mule is present, the agricultural technology being applied is basically medieval. A friend went to Poland in the late 1990s, saw mules being used in farms as his train went through the countryside, and relayed this exact sentiment: "Outside Warsaw, they're still living in the Middle Ages".
>In most parts of Northern Europe, however, these new agricultural technologies did not become dominant until just after World War II!
Have you read Tooze's book "The Wages of Destruction"? Great read. He had some description of the state of German agriculture on the eve of WW2. Basically, that we think of Germany as a highly modern economy due to having a number of world-class industrial concerns, but as a whole its economy lagged Britain and France due to a highly unproductive agricultural sector. He blamed its lack of productivity on the predominance of tiny (<100 acre) family farms.
It seems to me that a small farm doesn't HAVE to rely on antiquated technology and methods, but it's easy to see how an entire agricultural sector of small family farms, passed down within families, and selling to local markets can easily be prone to a much more hidebound mentality than the industrial sector.
Yes, I have read Tooze's book, but I do not remember what he said about German agriculture. I am not sure that I agree with his claim that German agriculture was backward due to having small family farms. Small farms can be very productive, and Prussia was known for its huge farming estates.
I plan on writing an article about how agricultural productivity affected the outcome of World War 1.
I was curious to refresh my memory on this point about Germany and I see this Wikipedia article actually cites Tooze (the size of farms here is actually much smaller than I remember):
"Germany indeed had a shortage of arable land. In 1937, farmers in Germany tilled an average of 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) each compared to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) for each French farmer, 3.8 hectares (9.4 acres) for each British farmer, and a munificent 12.8 hectares (32 acres) for each American farmer. Moreover, German agriculture was backward with too many small or inefficient farms and agricultural workers. Farmers and agricultural workers made up 26 percent of Germany's labor force in 1939 (compared to about 17 percent of the U.S. labor force in the same year which produced a large surplus of food.)"
I suspect Tooze's figures here are treating independent farmers and hired agricultural workers as equivalent. So it might be the case that Prussian agriculture was dominated by large estates but had an excess of workers on them. Though it might also be the case that Prussia and the rest of Germany had very different patterns in this regard (especially if we mean Prussia in its 1815 or earlier borders, when it made up a smaller part of the country than in 1870).
Michael, I was just thinking about your idea for a WW1 article.
One thing that I've never seen properly addressed, and could use some addressing, is how the Ottomans, and to a lesser extent the more backward countries of Europe, were still able to mobilize enormous numbers of men. E.g. the Ottomans, with a reported population of 18 million in 1914, many of them hostile minorities, reportedly mobilized 3 million men!
I'm wondering if this concept of what we might call "mechanized-but-not-motorized agriculture" had something to do with how they were able to achieve this with what was still considered a largely pre-industrial economy, without starving to death.
A few years ago I read the Sean McMeekin book on the Ottomans in WW1 and was honestly somewhat disappointed, because while it had an interesting narrative, in the end I still didn't feel like I really grasped how their system worked. I don't remember him offering anything to help me reconcile the numbers he presented of population, mobilization, and casualties, alongside the image of a semi-medieval economic and administrative system.
It’s difficult to comprehend all of the tiny improvements in knowledge that, accumulated over time, can lead to such a drastic improvement in food output.
We went from barely having enough to feed a few million people, to comfortably feeding 8 billion. There is room for improvement, but with current demographic trends, we may not ever need to feed more than 10 billion.
Great stuff. As always, so helpful to have factual information about how the world developed. Thank you!
Yes, very interesting to think about how this developed technically and geographically.
Possible typo?: "The Brabant plow ... turns the soil to the left, while the other turns it to the left." [right?]
Are there 30 horses in that top picture (5 rows of 6 across?), plus 5 to 7 men on the carriage, with maybe a follow on wagon of some sort?? 30 HP!! Corralling and arranging all of that would come close to a small factory operation by itself. Presumably keeping horses was still easier and cheaper than finding labor on a flexible schedule? Mostly need open fields (partly fallowing?) and/or access to hay/oats, etc. ?? I would also guess that neighbors worked together sharing horses and related assets to some degree to work the larger farms and manage some of the bigger implements?
It also occurs to me that perhaps part of why America led the way is our settling of wide open spaces and the settler's comfort level in living and transporting and traveling over greater distances than were common in Europe. Also, the land was not yet chopped up into 5 to 100 acre parcels? Then again, 6 mile square townships were commonly platted, right? And the earliest transfers to Australia, Canada, and Argentina would have occurred there for similar reasons.
Good catch. Typo corrected.
Yes, hitching up the horses for these farm implements must have been quite an operation. I am not sure how ownership of the horses typically worked, but horses were incredibly useful. Not only could they do much of the farm work, but they also were critical for transporting the agricultural product to cities or to the nearest rail head.
>By the late 19th Century virtually every step in grain farming (and many other types of agriculture) had been mechanized. And it is important to realize that all of this occurred before the application of steam engines and internal combustion engine powered tractors. Virtually all of these devices were powered by horse, mule, or hand cranks.
Thanks for this -- I really didn't have much appreciation for this fact. I think for a lot of us Americans, for whom the John Deere tractor is as classic as apple pie, our first instinct is to assume that if a mule is present, the agricultural technology being applied is basically medieval. A friend went to Poland in the late 1990s, saw mules being used in farms as his train went through the countryside, and relayed this exact sentiment: "Outside Warsaw, they're still living in the Middle Ages".
>In most parts of Northern Europe, however, these new agricultural technologies did not become dominant until just after World War II!
Have you read Tooze's book "The Wages of Destruction"? Great read. He had some description of the state of German agriculture on the eve of WW2. Basically, that we think of Germany as a highly modern economy due to having a number of world-class industrial concerns, but as a whole its economy lagged Britain and France due to a highly unproductive agricultural sector. He blamed its lack of productivity on the predominance of tiny (<100 acre) family farms.
It seems to me that a small farm doesn't HAVE to rely on antiquated technology and methods, but it's easy to see how an entire agricultural sector of small family farms, passed down within families, and selling to local markets can easily be prone to a much more hidebound mentality than the industrial sector.
Thanks for the comment.
Yes, I have read Tooze's book, but I do not remember what he said about German agriculture. I am not sure that I agree with his claim that German agriculture was backward due to having small family farms. Small farms can be very productive, and Prussia was known for its huge farming estates.
I plan on writing an article about how agricultural productivity affected the outcome of World War 1.
The WW1 article sounds great.
I was curious to refresh my memory on this point about Germany and I see this Wikipedia article actually cites Tooze (the size of farms here is actually much smaller than I remember):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_and_agriculture_in_Nazi_Germany
"Germany indeed had a shortage of arable land. In 1937, farmers in Germany tilled an average of 2.1 hectares (5.2 acres) each compared to 2.8 hectares (6.9 acres) for each French farmer, 3.8 hectares (9.4 acres) for each British farmer, and a munificent 12.8 hectares (32 acres) for each American farmer. Moreover, German agriculture was backward with too many small or inefficient farms and agricultural workers. Farmers and agricultural workers made up 26 percent of Germany's labor force in 1939 (compared to about 17 percent of the U.S. labor force in the same year which produced a large surplus of food.)"
I suspect Tooze's figures here are treating independent farmers and hired agricultural workers as equivalent. So it might be the case that Prussian agriculture was dominated by large estates but had an excess of workers on them. Though it might also be the case that Prussia and the rest of Germany had very different patterns in this regard (especially if we mean Prussia in its 1815 or earlier borders, when it made up a smaller part of the country than in 1870).
Michael, I was just thinking about your idea for a WW1 article.
One thing that I've never seen properly addressed, and could use some addressing, is how the Ottomans, and to a lesser extent the more backward countries of Europe, were still able to mobilize enormous numbers of men. E.g. the Ottomans, with a reported population of 18 million in 1914, many of them hostile minorities, reportedly mobilized 3 million men!
I'm wondering if this concept of what we might call "mechanized-but-not-motorized agriculture" had something to do with how they were able to achieve this with what was still considered a largely pre-industrial economy, without starving to death.
A few years ago I read the Sean McMeekin book on the Ottomans in WW1 and was honestly somewhat disappointed, because while it had an interesting narrative, in the end I still didn't feel like I really grasped how their system worked. I don't remember him offering anything to help me reconcile the numbers he presented of population, mobilization, and casualties, alongside the image of a semi-medieval economic and administrative system.
Fantastic article.
Glad that you enjoyed it!