ABSTRACT
Contemporary writers recorded the poverty of French agriculture compared to English. Only Holland, and a few localised farming regions in other Continental countries, could equal the productiveness of British agriculture. The rapid alternation of different types of landscape and soil in Britain fostered this agricultural diversity, which was evident from the fifteenth century or earlier. The beginning of the systematic cross-breeding of animals is often associated with the mid-eighteenth-century Leicestershire breeder Robert Bakewell, although interbreeding to improve characteristics was certainly not new. A cattle rearing was mainly for meat, since milk was hardly sold outside the individual farm, although cheese production and sale was important. The growth of a national market in Britain was not just a function of increasing population, for in much of Europe the same conditions applied but did not have the same effects. The result of agricultural specialisation was a greater exchange of products over a wider area.
