Long-Run Capacity of Agriculture

Abstract

Already, broad empirical contours of early Western and contemporary Asian agricultural development provide sufficient evidence to support the hypothesis of unfavourable levels and changes in the ratios of the M aa -variables of the Asian as compared to the Western countries.1 Europe, for instance, in the 18th and 19th centuries had sufficient land ‘to start with’. Extensive cultivation as a means of enhancing agricultural output was feasible and, in fact, was an important factor in securing sufficient food for the additional population. Land clearance continued in Eastern Europe, where most areas did not reach saturation, as far as population at the prevailing level of technology was concerned, until late in the 19th century. Only since the beginning of the present century has land clearance ceased to be of major importance as a means of enhancing agricultural output.2 In Western Europe the extensive method of land cultivation which was characteristic of the two-field system offered large reserve capacities for increases in agricultural output once the shift to the three- and four-field system was accomplished. In France, England, and Saxony in 1760, half of the land cultivated had to be sacrificed as fallow land under the two-field system. With the subsequent change to the three- and four-field system, the percentage of fallow land constantly fell over the following 150 years to an intangible level (Table 8.1).