The new farming methods that so radically changed English agriculture in
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were not adopted
immediately by all farmers. The rate of improvement was uneven, not only
between one farmer and another, but between different farming regions.
This book suggests an approach to the problem of regional agricultural
change and the factors which determined the different rates of change.
Dr Grigg begins by describing the differences between the agricultural
regions of South Lincolnshire - that is the two parts of Kesteven and
Holland, an area fairly typical of eastern England - at the end of the
eighteenth century. These were differences not only of land use and soil
type but of landownership and farm size, productivity and location. The
diffusion and adoption of new methods in each region is considered
against the general economic background of the late eighteenth century
and the boom conditions of the period of the Napoleonic Wars. The later
part of the book traces the rate of farming improvement in the less
favourable price conditions after 1815, and finds a marked contrast
between this period and the preceding forty years. The way in which the
agricultural geography of the area was changed by the new methods is
discussed, and in addition Dr Grigg shows how the conditions of each
agricultural region affected farmers' response to the new methods.
