The first green revolution: the growth of production and productivity in European agriculture, 1870‐1914

Abstract

T he years after I870 were a major turning point in the history of the agriculture of western Europe. Until then, agricultural growth had almost taken a single course. As the population grew and land became scarcer, labour intensity of agricultural production was increased to raise the output per hectare. After I750 this process of Boserup-like agricultural growth had been very much stimulated by rapidly rising cereal prices and an accelerating rate of population growth.' In large parts of western Europe the classical twoand three-field rotation systems had given way to much more labourintensive modes of agricultural production, in which the fallow was replaced by legumes, potatoes, and sugar beet. The increased supply of nitrogen resulted in large advances in agricultural productivity per hectare.2 The economic rationale of this agricultural revolution is clear; until about I850 real wages of agricultural labourers, expressed in quantities of wheat or rye, showed a declining trend in most west European countries. This trend was only interrupted by the agricultural depression of i8I8-35. Britain seems to be the major exception, the deepest 'trough' in the real wage level being in the Napoleonic wars.3 The rental value of agricultural land increased even more than cereal prices and this long-term trend continued well into the third quarter of the nineteenth century.4 All this meant that farmers were strongly induced to increase production per hectare by using more wage labour and family labour. After I870 this changed. The process of 'modern economic growth', which had begun in most countries of western Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century and which accelerated after I856, in the long run caused labour to become increasingly scarce. When the rise of cereal prices came to a halt in the I87os and the agricultural depression set in, nominal wages continued to rise as an increasing share of the labour force left the countryside for the rapidly growing cities. Real wages of agricultural labourers expressed in kilograms of wheat doubled in almost all European countries between I870 and 19io (table 3).