Grantham:
 
> 7.  We now have two excellent studies of large-scale
> farming around Paris (J.-M. Moriceu, Les fermiers de l'Ile
> de France, and J-M.  Moricea and G. Postel-Vinay, Ferme,
> entreprise, famille), which reveal the extent to which a
> growing market opportunity could induce productivity growth
> among the farms that served it.  The sources of this growth
> are multiple: rearrangement of plots--often by sub- letting
> and exchanges--in order to reduce the time required to
> plough and sow; increased investment in carts and weagons;
> new barns and hangars; increased sales of by-products like
> straw to urban and noble stables; multiplied ploughing, and
> sowing more legumes.  All of these are associated with the
> agricultural revolution.  What is interesting is that the
> same responses have been detected in medieval accounts on
> farms subject to the same kind of market opportunity.  The
> time series indicate that when these opportunities
> contracted, as they did in northern Europe after 1300 and
> around Paris for about 80 years after 1660, productivity
> tended to fall off.

Here G picks up some of the sources of growth that are 
"associated with the agricultural revolution", to argue that those 
sources were always there, ready to be used depending on market 
opportunities: if "these opportunities contracted, as they did in 
northern Europe after 1300 and around Paris for about 80 years after 
1660, productivity tended to fall off"

Again, I think Grantham does not quite understand the nature of 
agrarian change in pre-industrial Europe (though I would hesitate 
saying this to him in the open as he might very well put me in my 
place!). Yes, early on in the medieval period (perhaps  as far 
back as the 9th century in some estates) we can already detect a 
triennial system of rotation in which cereals are sown along with 
leguminous plants. But we must not underestimate the fact that the  
variety and quantity of these plants increases with time, that 
farmers gradually learn how to cultivate new fodder crops, and
how to alternate different crops in new rotations. Even if there is 
evidence that "clover was being sown
in the Rhineland" by the 13th century (point 2), it was only in the 
seventeenth century, that it was used on a large scale *alongside the 
cultivation of turnips* - that is, my point is that it is not simply 
the cultivation of this or that fodder but how many types of such 
crops were being sown and in what system of rotation.
 


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