Enclosure+and+Industrialization

The enclosure movement was a revolution in village life. During the 1700’s many European countries often faced famine. The Agricultural Revolution aimed to eliminate fallow land. They began to use fallow land to cultivate nitrogen-storing crops like beans and buckwheat. This provided more crops for the people to eat. It also provided for the animals, which provided more meat for the community and more manure for fertilizer. Crop rotation was also put into place to keep the soil fertile. All of these improvements in farming led to the enclosure of open, common fields. This would let farmers experiment with their crops with out having to get the consent of his fellow landholders. Enclosing off farmland led to lots of innovation in the farming world. Large landowners benefitted from enclosure, so did tenant farmers. The independent peasant farmers suffered from the enclosure process so they moved from the countryside to towns and cities to work in textiles and the growth cottage industry. The agricultural revolution improved life in the countryside and in the city by giving the cities more peasants to help their economy.