Evolution of Agricultural Practices and the Transformation of the English Landscape

Agriculture has been the principal influence on the physical structure of the English landscape for many thousands of years. Driven by a wider raft of demographic, social, and economic developments, farming has changed in complex ways over this lengthy period, with differing responses to the productive potential and problems of local environments leading to the emergence of distinct regional landscapes. The character and configuration of these, as much as any contemporary influences, have in turn structured the practice of agriculture at particular points in time. The increasing complexity of the wider economy has also been a key influence on the development of the farmed landscape, especially large-scale industrialization in the late 18th and 19th centuries; and, from the late 19th century, globalization and increasing levels of state intervention. Change in agricultural systems has not continued at a constant rate but has displayed periods of more and less innovation.