Crop Yield - History

History

Historically speaking, a major increase in crop yield took place in the early eighteenth century with the end of the ancient, wasteful cycle of the three-course system of crop rotation whereby a third of the land lay fallow every year and hence taken out of human food, and animal feed, production.

It was to be replaced by the four-course system of crop rotation, devised in England in 1730 by Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend or "Turnip" Townshend during the British Agricultural Revolution, as he was called by early detractors.

In the first year wheat or oats were planted; in the second year barley or oats; in the third year clover, rye, rutabaga and/or kale were planted; in the fourth year turnips were planted but not harvested. Instead, sheep were driven on to the turnip fields to eat the crop, trample the leavings under their feet into the soil, and by doing all this, fertilize the land with their droppings. In the fifth year (or first year of the new rotation), the cycle began once more with a planting of wheat or oats, in an average, a thirty percent increased yield.