ABSTRACT
On the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of the British Agricultural History Society in 1977, William N.Parker published an article in which he pointed out that there are still important unanswered questions about the English agricultural revolution, 1750-1850. For example:
By what means was Britain’s growing population fed in these critical decades before the massive imports of overseas meat and grain? Could not some balance sheet be constructed to show the relative importance of dietary changes-whether restrictions or improvements (pace Hartwell, Hobsbawm)—increased grain yields and meat supplies at home, Irish and other imports, and finally the new crops and abandonment of fallow?… Did turnips or clover or both together feed by way of meat-animals or richer and better tilled soil for the grain crop-30 percent of the population increase or 80 percent of it in the Industrial Revolution?
