How effective was the open-field system?

In 1750 almost 50 per cent of farms in Britain were using the open-field system to grow crops. This was a system that had been used since the Middle Ages and had always sufficiently fed the British population. Local landowners rented land to tenant farmers who grew just enough food to survive and, if there was any food left over, they would then sell it at the village market. This system was known as subsistence farming.

Under the open-field system, a typical village would have three or sometimes four fields around it and a piece of common land that everyone could use. Each villager had thin strips of land in each field, which meant everyone had a piece of good land and a piece of bad land.

Each field was planted with a different crop every year. One might have wheat, a second barley and the last field lay fallow (empty) to allow the soil to recover its goodness, otherwise the soil's nutrients would be used up and produce a bad crop.

The open-field system

Diagram of the open-field system showing a village with three fields:

• Field 1 - wheat
• Field 2 - barley
• Field 3 - fallow (animals graze)

During winter, animals could graze on the fallow field so that manure would act as a fertiliser. Villagers needed to have land in all three fields because of the rotation cycle; otherwise they would have had no crops every third year.

This system had been in use for centuries and it had many advantages, but by 1750, the British population was growing rapidly and the system's disadvantages became much greater than its advantages.