ABSTRACT
Market-orientated agricultural systems had gradually developed over centuries with the establishment of relatively large farms, whose occupiers and/or owners possessed the capital to finance technical innovation. Living conditions varied between places, depending upon agricultural productivity, population density and the social division of the products of labour. Land and labour remained the principal inputs of a traditional agriculture. The structure of farming and the nature of innovation were to a large degree determined by the characteristics of the markets for agricultural products. Dietary conservatism imposed by narrow social and geographical horizons and by low disposable incomes thus represented an obstacle to innovation in agriculture because of the traditional patterns of demand which it preserved. J. C. Toutain has pointed out that food consumption allows historians to make more significant judgements about the effectiveness of an agricultural system than do statistics on the volume or value of total production.
