Who invented crop rotation history

Reproduced by permission. Slash and burn agriculture is a successful strategy as long as the agricultural plots remain small in relation to the surrounding rainforest , and the plot has many years to recover before being cultivated again. Large-scale slash and burn agriculture results in permanent destruction of rainforest ecosystems, and in complete loss of agricultural productivity on the deforested land. Crop rotation fell out of favor in developed nations in the s, when farmers found they could maintain high-yield monoculture crops by applying newly developed chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and weed killers to their fields.

Large-scale commercial agriculture that requires prescribed chemical treatments has become the norm in most developed nations, including the United States. Once you understand the principles of crop rotation the various systems and the theories behind those systems start to make sense. If you grow the same crop in the same place year after year you will get a build up of pests and diseases specific to that crop.

Different crops take different levels of nutrients from the soil and inevitably these become unbalanced, exhausting one nutrient but leaving a lot of another.

Even the addition of fertilizers is unlikely to help since it is likely the trace elements and micro-nutrients are depleted in the same way. Some gardeners persist in growing their runner beans or onions in the same place each year but it has been proven this is not a good idea — not every old fashioned method is good! Rotating crops will reduce losses to pest and disease.

Combine this with bettter use of nutrients and you will find increased yields from the same area of land. A basic principle of crop rotation is not to grow the same thing in the same place two years running.

In fact, the larger the gap between a crop occupying the same piece of ground the better. Some pests may be present at high levels initially but a gap of three or four years will see their numbers fall to acceptable levels without a host to sustain them. There are many different systems for rotating crops, some fairly crude and some quite complex, designed to ensure that following crops utilise nutrients left by previous crops.

The four field system was successful because it improved the amount of food produced. From medieval times, peasants had used a system of three year strip rotation of crops. The peasants worked land which had been granted to them by a landowner, often a nobleman. In return, the peasants swore their allegiance to the landowner and were ready to fight for him in times of conflict.

Every year in December, the peasants would allocate strips of land to each other at a public meeting. At first, each strip was about one acre 0,4 hectares in area. Each peasant would be allotted about thirty strips 12 hectares.

These were equally divided between three large, open fields. These strips became smaller, and each peasant was allotted less of them, as the number of people in each family eligible for for strips increased.

Between the 15th and 18th centuries there was a gradual increase in the amount of land being enclosed. Enclosed literally meant that a field was surrounded by a fence or a hedge. It also meant that the enclosed field was worked as a complete unit and no longer divided into strips. The reasons for the increase in land enclosure were varied. Soon after the Wars of the Roses , some noblemen sold their land because they were short of money.

During the New Deal, the federal government encouraged farmers to use a three or four year crop rotation program to help replenish the soil. Experts recommended that farmers plant crops two years in a row, followed by a fallow non-crop year.

In addition to helping renew the soil, this program also helped manage crop production and prices.