ABSTRACT
The progressive integration of marketing systems had also gradually encouraged farmers to adapt cropping to terrain and environment instead of aiming for self-sufficiency. Productivity and the reliability of supply both stood higher than ever before, though their farming was inevitably organic and still conducive to many kinds of wildlife. It had evolved primarily through discovering and combining the best available practices contained within the age-old pattern of European farming, though new crops from America, and especially the potato, had contributed. The health and size of most rural communities, including most market towns, therefore depended on agriculture and its support activities. The 'Golden Age' concept actually tells farmers more about the structure of rural society than anything else, with perception at least as important as fact. To declare it a Golden Age is to allow the experience of the farmers to overrule that of other groups, and to celebrate production as an end in itself.
