Talk:British Agricultural Revolution/Archive 1

Credibility issue

This article is lacking in sources to qualify the information, unless this is corrected, anyone is free to nominate the article for deletion. 90.196.221.60 (talk) 08:09, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

no one cares —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.108.152.23 (talk) 22:29, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

Oh, contrare! We do care. This article is written from a biased perspective. The phrase "life, liberty and property" pops up too many times to be innocent. To mention the origins of the agricultural revolution without proper consideration of how enclosures violated all three (sometimes, too often) reveals the bias.Beau in NC (talk) 17:28, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

The article has been largely rewritten, with much reference to Overton (1996), a high quality source.Phmoreno (talk) 18:18, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

It can however be improved, by more precise dating: the open-crop system we now know from the strip-farming found in England to be pre-Celtic, not mediaeval, and the three-crop rotation possibly of Arabic origins, imported in the spanish translations of the 13th Century.

You should also add a link from the Agronomy meme. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 176.252.227.106 (talk) 16:38, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Expert

Is this article still in need of review by an expert after the recent edits of the past 1-2 weeks? --Galaxydog2000 00:39, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

• As I said below, I'm no expert... But you can probably safely remove the expert tag, as I think the outstanding problem at the time of tagging, that a possibly discounted historical view was being presented as definitive, is now resolved. I think the lead is now sufficiently vague... --Tsavage 02:40, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

The article is now in reasonably good shape. This discussion should be archived.Phmoreno (talk) 18:21, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Traditional interpretation

This is a traditional interpretation of the 'Agricultural Revolution', a top-down perspective focussing on the effects of innovative landlords. Historiography on the subject has developed a great deal, and nowadays the 'yeoman's agricultural revolution' interpretation is more fashionable: that small yeoman farmers were the driving force behing the changes that allowed agricultural probuction to keep up with the population boom of the nineteenth century. Recommend a rewrite. --81.136.125.40 01:38, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'm no expert, but I do understand the problem. I've started the realignment with some additions to the lead. --Tsavage 01:54, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

It's more fashionable amongst leftist historians (the bias is fairly obvious, they of course want to discredit evil upper class landlords and make everything a "[people's revolution etc), obviously the viewpoint should be accounted for, but that doesn't mean a rewrite, just additions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.185.35.67 (talk) 12:14, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

How massive is "massive"?

I came ot this article to try to answer a question on the topic: how greatly did agricultural yields rise over history? The article starts by noting the English system resulted in massive increases in yield, but there is no number put to this claim.

Anyone know? There has to be a good chart out there somewhere. A friend who used to work in Uganda claimed it was something like 3 bushels per acre of corn there vs. about 22 in Europe, but that's against the most modern European methods. Maury 11:48, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I added a statistic:

In 1870, Britain was producing three times as much food as it was in 1700.

--LakeHMM 00:46, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

Request for help

I've just added Expert and Agri-stub tags to the article, after briefly trying to edit the opening paragraphs. This article needs more work to bring it up to encyclopedic quality IMO, and I hope it will get it. Cheers, Madmagic 20:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Terrible threshing machine pun

That really is a horrible pun regarding the threshing machine being the last straw. It really should be replaced with a more, um, professional? statement... Thoughts? 142.176.115.63 (talk) 01:51, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Content outside of time frame

The current mechanization of agriculture section discusses various modern agricultural technologies, such as Caterpillar D4's and Model F tractors, which is irrelevant to the British Agricultural Revolution between the 15th century and the 19th century, as they fall within the 20th century. TastyGrue (talk) 03:45, 3 April 2012 (UTC)TastyGrue

I have removed it for the reason you state. cheers Geopersona (talk) 06:41, 1 January 2013 (UTC)

Geographical scope

Hello, this article is about developments in British agriculture, however developments on the Continent are also mentioned. The article is linked to articles in other languages with a broader geographical scope, like fr:Révolution agricole and de:Landwirtschaftliche Revolution. I think this is confusing. History of agriculture has a section "Europe" but this is about the Middle ages, there is only a very small and global section about the Early modern period. I think this is an omission. Bever (talk) 21:31, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree, and with the points raised above about time period. All of this pales into insignificance beside the lack of sources and poor quality of the prose. I tried to start a copy edit today, but I abandoned the effort as the current text may be irredeemable. I am not quite sure what to suggest: we could take out the irrelevant non-British and out of period stuff and go from there or we could just go grab some basic books and start all over again with a concise and reliably sourced version.--SabreBD (talk) 21:40, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Needs major revision

Based on reading Overton, Mark (1996). Agricultural Revolution in England: The transformation if the agrarian economy 1500-1850. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-56859-3. I think much of this article is off topic. Phmoreno (talk) 04:12, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

Then use the source to revise it... but take care of existing sourced material, there may be differences of published academic opinion here. Mind you, a lot of the material is certainly way off the subject, and some sections are entirely unsourced. A bit of slash and burn may be in order. Chiswick Chap (talk) 07:56, 27 February 2014 (UTC)

I think I am rapidly moving in to the slash and burn camp. So much of the current article is unsourced that it is probably too much of a daunting task to improve it. It may be better to go down to a smaller more focused article and work from there with sourced material.--SabreBD (talk) 13:11, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

OK, we better get on with it then. I've made a first pass - I found that even where there were refs, they were often poor or only marginally relevant, the writing rambling and essaylike. More can be cut. Starting afresh might be best. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:01, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

I have several pages of notes from Overton (1996) and a good enough understanding of the material to get started with a major re-edit, but I have a busy week ahead and will not be able to do that much. However; I should be able to put together a highlights section following the lede that will give an overview of the important developments. Overton is my only strictly relevant source, but it I believe it may be a standard reference on the subject because I have seen it cited so often.Phmoreno (talk) 03:05, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

• Hello. Please be mindful to make notes about deleting content with references. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:23, 1 March 2014 (UTC)

I will read through the existing article and try to move anything that is well written and sourced to the appropriate section.Phmoreno (talk) 15:21, 1 March 2014 (UTC)