A farm labourer during the Agricultural Revolution

My name in Stephen Jones and I live in Norfolk in England. Over the past few years a huge number of changes have taken places in farming. Before the Agricultural Revolution most people lived in small villages and grew crops in fields scattered here and there and reared farm animals on the village common land. However, there were lots of problems. We all had narrow strips of land and sometimes farm animals walked all over our crops. Also all the farm work had to be done by hand and this made the work really slow.

However, when people began to move to the new cities to work in big factories great changes took place in the countryside. The government passed a law, which was called the Enclosure Act and this meant that farmers built fences and ditches and all their land was in one large unit. Another major change has been the introduction of a system of crop rotation, which began here in Norfolk and this means that the soil is always kept enriched and does not get worn out. Our method is that we plant a different crop in each field every year and in one year we let clover grow in the field as this is good for the soil.

Another change was that new machines have been invented to make farming much easier but it also means that there is less need for farm labourers. One of these machines was invented by a man called Jethro Tull and it is called the seed drill, which makes it possible to grow more grain because all the seeds are properly covered by soil when planting takes place. Another machine that was invented was the mechanical reaper, which was pulled by two horses and this could do the work of a few men in just a few hours. Lastly, another big change is that new and better breeds of cattle and sheep have been brought to the countryside, which have more meat and produce more milk.