ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that whether the depression of Flemish agriculture was due to technological failure or to circumstances beyond the farmers' control, particularly war. Evidence is unclear for the impact of the revolt of maritime Flanders on farm output, but the 'Ghent War' was the worst disaster of the fourteenth century for Flemish agriculture. The Ghent municipal accounts do not survive from the plague years, which were also a period of political revolution. When they resume, they suggest but do not prove conclusively a decline of economic productivity that may be connected to a population loss. The southeast continued to have the highest population density and the most intensive agriculture, while the northeast was notable for dairy farming and peat. Flanders became the leader in dairy products in the southern Low Countries in the fifteenth century.
