Transcript From productivity revolutions to food security?

From
productivity
revolutions to
food security?
The possibilities for agrarian
history in 18th and 19thcentury Britain
Henry French - History
Food security and
historical
interpretations
•
•
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Past – Productivity
revolutions
Present – GDP/living
standards
Future – Food security?
PAST - Traditional
Interpretations
‘Agricultural Revolution’
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Productivity increases
•
Technology improvements
•
Institutional change
PAST Productivity
England & Wales:
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1650 – Grain imports
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1750 – Grain exports
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Similar population levels
PAST Technology
‘Great Men’/’Cows & Ploughs’
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Agricultural tools
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Improved agronomy
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Selective breeding
•
Diffusion
PAST - Institutional
Change
Land, Labour, Capital:
•
Enclosure
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Tenures
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Farm size
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Tripartite labour structure
PAST - Main
debate?
When was the ‘Agricultural
Revolution?
•
1560-1670?
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1650-1750?
•
1750-1850?
PRESENT –
GDP/Living
standards
•
•
•
‘Great Divergence’
English exceptionalism?
Labourers & nutrition
PRESENT – Great
Divergence
Britain bucking the trend?
•
Higher labour productivity
•
Relatively abundant food
•
Higher real wages
•
Greater consumption
PRESENT – English
exceptionalism?
A return to ‘optimism’?
•
Ag. productivity higher,
earlier?
•
Shallower decline in real
wages post-1500?
•
Earlier, but shallower growth,
post-1650?
PRESENT – The
nutrition angle
Where does the productivity
come from?
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Labourers better fed
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Therefore food more
abundant
•
Therefore living standards
higher
PRESENT - main
debate?
Security achieved – earlier, but
slower?
•
High living standards, by
international standards
•
Security achieved by 17th
century?
•
Higher wages/lower costs =
demand = industry?
FUTURE – Food
security?
History through the lens of food
security:
•
Is it national self-sufficiency?
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Is it environmental
sustainability?
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No ‘golden ages’?
FUTURE – Food
security?
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•
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Post-1846 - Free trade v. selfsufficiency
Agricultural depression – a
productivist construction?
20th Century – War = ‘Food
security’
FUTURE –
Environmental
sustainability
Productivism, at what cost?
•
Long-term measures of biodiversity, since Middle Ages
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Soil degradation/nitrogen
levels, since 1840s
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Intensification & the end of
‘easy oil’, since 1940s
FUTURE – History
without ‘golden
ages’?
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•
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Need to assess the
contemporary environmental
costs of productivity ‘revolutions’
‘Security’ not just ‘national’ but
‘global’
Relationship between state
intervention and food ‘security’