Crop Production in the East of Scotland - SASA

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IntroductionDenmark via Normandy and Brittany); itdiffused into Scotland with the migration ofNormans, invited north by Scottish kingswho were intent on the Europeanisation oftheir predominantly Celtic country(introduction of the Roman CatholicChurch; fostering of trade and urbandevelopment; centralisation of authority).Under the evolving feudal system, parcelsof land were granted indefinitely tofavoured individuals and their descendants,and to various institutions of the church.These grants were in return for acommitment to provide military support(men, arms and supplies) as required, butalso hospitality when the court or itsofficers were travelling. Those who heldland directly from the crown in this way(the barons) were responsible for local lawand order, holding the power of life anddeath over the inhabitants of their barony.The land could be repossessed by the kingif the baron failed to perform;nevertheless, with the passage of time,barons came to consider themselves asland owners, and a legal system developedto keep track of the buying and selling ofland.Baronies varied enormously in size from afew hundred to many thousand hectares,and groups of baronies could be organisedinto regalities held by major magnates.Normally, the baron was not activelyinvolved in agricultural production; hedistributed the land of the barony totenants (tackholders or tacksmen), in arange of legal arrangements, which, by theend of the seventeenth century, normallyinvolved a written legal contract, coveringless than 20 years, which laid out thedetails of the rent to be paid (in the form ofagricultural produce, principally grain) andthe services to be rendered (harvest labour,peat cutting, haulage, acting asmessengers, maintaining the barony mill).Later, tacks included options for payment incash. The tacksman could manage theland himself or sublet to others, but theconsiderable amount of manual labourrequired for the existing agricultural systemwas supplied by numerous landless cottars.This form of land distribution led toseparate nuclei of settlement occupied bysmall groups of families (fermtouns), ratherthan larger villages, except in the Merseand East Lothian. Under the feudal system,land was a source of subsistence andlabour for the baron and, ultimately, theking; it was not, primarily, a source of cashincome. There was no tradition of smallscalelandownership; even the smallerlandholdings which were created out of thegreat religious baronies at the Reformationwere largely re-absorbed by larger estatesin subsequent centuries.The ImprovementsMuch has been made of the very primitivestate of agriculture in Scotland before theImprovements, and the role of the Union ofScotland and England (1707) in promotingagricultural progress. Recent historicalresearch has shown that this is asimplification; the records of grain exportsto continental Europe through east coastports in the seventeenth century show thatparts of the country were already wellabove the subsistence level, andimplementing new knowledge from theDutch as well as from England. A run ofvery poor harvests immediately before 1707has served to distort the record.Nevertheless, starting around 1700 in theSouth of Scotland, and moving in anirregular wave through the lowlands, an“agricultural revolution” did reach mostparts of the North-East lowlands by around1820. The rate of change accelerated after1750. This revolution was facilitated bymajor changes in the legal system, in socialorganisation, and in national politics, whichtended to alter the world view oflandowners; they changed from being the11
Crop Production in the East of Scotlandleader of the baronial community (includingthe role of dispenser of justice) to thecontroller of natural and human resourceswhich could be exploited for cash. TheImprovements involved numerous changes,including:• direct involvement of the owner or hisfactor in farming and farm management• reduction in the number of tenants• consolidation and rationalisation ofholdings, and the creation of walls,fences and hedges to control livestock• division and enclosure of common land• technical advances in crop production(e.g. liming; introduction of newrotations, featuring new species such asturnips, pasture legumes and sowngrasses; improved varieties and seedquality; the change from grass-fed ox tograin-fed horse power; improvedimplements; some drainage)• technical advances in livestockproduction, including better integrationof crop and livestock production (e.g.improved breeding; higher productivity;introduction of forage crops, andconservation of grass as hay, permittingoverwintering of greater numbers oflivestock; more, and higher-qualitymanure)Subsequent major improvements in thenineteenth century involved underdrainage,the use of imported mineralfertilisers such as guano, and progressivemechanisation. Another importantdevelopment in the seventeenth andeighteenth centuries was the reclamation offertile coastal areas and carselands byextensive drainage systems and theremoval of vast quantities of lowland peat.Modern TimesThe Improvements laid the foundation forthe major inter-related features of Scottishagriculture in modern times: large units (byNorthern European standards), low ruralpopulation, intensive production systems(but with functional connections betweencrop and livestock production), and anindustry tuned to national and world trendsrather than local or subsistence priorities.The consolidation and rationalisation of theland within large estates led to the rise of aclass of major tenants, farming areas of thescale of 40 hectares (100 acres),occasionally more, with a substantial stonebuilthouse and steading. These tenantspaid cash rents and marketed theirproducts independently. They had securityof tenure and could normally pass thetenancy to the next generation. During thetwentieth century, consolidation continued,and a high proportion of individual farmsbecame owner-occupied: at the 1998agricultural census, the mean area of cropsand grass per holding in the study area was68 ha (170 acres) (see Tables 1.3 and 1.4).In the course of the eighteenth centuryImprovements, the remaining tacksmen andcottars were relegated to the status of farmservants (engaged for periods of months,and housed on the farm) or day labourers.The fermtouns were largely destroyed inthe process of consolidation, anddisappeared entirely from the landscape; insome areas, even their names have beenforgotten. They were replaced by sufficientcottages to house the labourers required bythe farm. This pattern was not uniformthroughout the area. For example, in theNorth-East, it was common for improvinglandlords to create small holdings at theboundary of the intensively-managed land;tenants were offered generous initial termsto induce them to bring the land intocultivation. In the nineteenth century, there12
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Crop Production in the East of Scotland - SASA

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