Joseph Green asked me personally (and I have his permission to
post this in pen-l):
> I have a
> question of clarification.
> On 3 May 01, at 13:50, Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
>
> > iv) "In England...animal herds were...probably increasing; but the
> > outlook for soil fertility was still far less rosy than is suggested
> >
> by
> > some accounts of the 'Agricultural Revolution'...the manure
> > generated on these new pastures...increased total farm output
> > (grain plus animal products) but not crop output" (223-24).
>
>
> This appears to say that P ignores the issue of animal
> products, and also only looks at partial figures for crops (i.e.
> crops minus the huge amount used for animal feed) in dealing with the
> state of agriculture. Perhaps I have misunderstood you. But if not,
> this would appear to be an amazing case of P seeking to arrive at a
> conclusion through any manipulation of data. Otherwise the production
> and consumption of meat would appear to very relevant to comparisons
> of relative welfare, as well as to the state of agriculture. .
>
> This is aside from the question of whether his comparisons on
> this question are really relevant to his thesis.
>
> Regards,
> Joseph Green
On the question of livestock productivity, I know little except that
this type of productivity measures land productivity, and that Clark,
in another publication, actually says that livestock productivity rose
six times from the middle ages to the mid-19th century as
compared to crop output per unit area which only doubled. In this
latter case, he appears to be measuring land productivity, and not
labor productivity as we saw in the last post.
But let's recall that, in the 1991 article which P cites and which we
examined last, Clark is really saying that labor productivity barely
increased after 1770. He is not talking about land productivity.
Keeping this distinction in mind is very important because P
himself makes much of the fact that Chinese agriculture was
superior to European agriculture as measured by its land
productivity. If the Europeans were ahead in certain technologies,
they were certainly behind in land-saving innovations.
It is not clear why, but reading P it is as if England was behind
China in land productivity, yet had no slack resources and was
unable to attain/accomplish additional land-saving innovations and
increases in land productivity after 1750: "English agriculture had
reached a point by the late 18th century at which further increases
in output were almost impossible without a major technological
breakthrough" (p126). It is in this context that he uses Clark and
Ambrosoli. Europe had some slack resources, but not England, as
testified by its low crop yields after 1750.
But we saw, in fact, that what Clark is saying is that after 1770
England managed to achieve higher yields only at the cost of
greater inputs of labor. England's labor productivity appears to be
declining, but Clark does not say that its land productivity is also
declining (as far as that 1991 paper is concerned). So, it is
strange that P then goes on to say, in the same page, that
according to Ambrosoli England employed agricultural practices
which raised labor productivity but which "interfered with preserving
soil fertility".
Next I intend to argue that, yes, there is some evidence that output
per worker remained fairly static after 1770, but not output per acre
(by which I mean, in this case, land productivity).
