The mangold wurzel was for nineteenth-century Irish agricultural improvement what rape seed is today. The success of this crop and its replacement of the potato as primary animal fodder exercised the minds of improvers and picaresque visitors alike; transmitting the information took up to 100 years in Ireland. Farmers are still being encouraged today to try new forms of crop rotation and even though it was well known in the nineteenth century, rape is now the dominant crop favoured in rotation. Today, the yield from a wheat crop is 35% greater when it has been planted in the same field, following a rape seed crop. The oil from rape seed is used in industry and the remainder used to make rape cake which is the current staple animal fodder in Ireland. This useful information is transmitted to farmers today via weekly journals, radio news and regular agricultural seminars in centres throughout the country.
In the 17th, 18th and early 19th centuries English and Scottish improvers spearheaded the drive to improve methods of cultivation and animal breeding and transmit their findings through pamphlets via the Royal Society of London. The main protagonists were Jethro Tull, Thomas Coke of Holkham Hall , Robert Bakewell, Lord Townshend and Arthur Young. Their activities culminated in the establishment of the English Board of Agriculture in 1793. The improvement movement had a more limited influence in Ireland. The Dublin Society was formed in 1731 and its primary function was the promotion of new methods and improved farm machinery. The RDS briefly maintained an experimental farm in Dublin and held demonstrations in Phoenix Park, as well as publishing information on farming methods. It introduced premiums in 1741 to encourage farmers to adopt the latest ideas on cultivation, manuring and horticulture.
Crops
Turnips and red clover had been introduced into England from Flanders by Sir Richard Weston in 1644/45, and rye grass a few years later, the ‘new agriculture’ took hold first among the farmers of Norfolk where the popular four-course rotation was developed, and was known as ‘Norfolk farming’:
1. Wheat (sown the previous autumn)
2. Roots (sown in early summer)
3. Barley (sown in spring)
4. Clover (sown with the barley in year 3)
The advantages of this system were that it would provide farmers with an abundance of food for winter house feeding of livestock. In turn, the livestock would provide good manure to fertilise the fields, doing away with the long fallow period to let the land recover. Shortage of manure had always been an obstacle to agricultural productivity. Sowing of mangolds or turnips as root crops was slow to progress because of broadcast sowing, it was only with the Tull seed drill and horse hoe (after 1731) that support grew for these crops. It wasn’t until late nineteenth century that the small Irish farmers took to drills over the predominant lazybed . It was these two main improvements, crop rotation and sowing, that the model agricultural schools needed to impart and instil in its students and subsequently their parents. Extract from: Model Agricultural Schools in the 19th Century, a Masters Thesis by Deirdre Conroy Agricultural Improvement in the 18th and 19th century
