Agricultural Innovations

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that, of all the innovations discovered during the Middle Ages, the plow is considered the greatest transformer of social and cultural change. The author points out that the initial effect of the shift from horticulture to agriculture was an increase in food production because societies that adopted the plow were able to produce more food in a given territory than those that relied on the hoe and digging stick, thus leading to the development of permanent settlements. The paper relates that one of the most profound changes associated with the plow was the development of a system of writing because the trade of agricultural and other goods had to be tracked.

From the Paper:

"So deep were the diffusions of the agricultural techniques that before the First World War, farmers composed the largest single group in every country. They no longer made up the population everywhere, as they had from the dawn of history to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, a hundred years earlier. But farmers still made up a near-majority in every developed country except England and Belgium--in Germany, France, Japan, the United States--and, of course, in all underdeveloped countries, too. And with the current transformation, these agricultural producers are not "farmers" in most senses of the word; they are "agribusiness," which is arguably the most capital-intensive, most technology-intensive and most information-intensive industry."

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