AGRICULTURE IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE

Agriculture was central not only to the European economy of the Middle Ages but also to the daily and seasonal rhythms of the vast majority of medieval women and men. While peasant producers were directly involved in the cycles of intensive labor related to the land, noble and ecclesiastical landlords were dependent on the fruits of that agricultural labor to support their interests as warriors, clerics, and power brokers within the feudal and religious hierarchies. With approximately 90 percent of the population engaged in the production of food, the agricultural system of the Middle Ages (in many places called manorialism, as large landholders’estates were divided among different manors) created social as well as economic ties. The peasant family and village were the basic units of production within that system. Peasant families did not own the land they worked; rather, they held, or had tenure of, the right of access to a number of acres in common fields distributed among the village as a whole. In exchange for this access to the land, they owed their manorial landlords three or four days of labor per week on the fields reserved for the lord (the desmesne lands) as well as a variety of extra services and dues at certain times in the agricultural calendar. Due to the seasonal nature of agricultural tasks and the costs of farm implements and the animals to pull them, much of the work on individual holdings and on the lord’s demesne had to be done cooperatively by members of the community. Women’s agricultural tasks typically included the maintenance of animals such as chickens, cows, and other animals whose byproducts could be taken to market. Women were also responsible for the extensive gardens that supplemented the family diet and served as seasonal cash crops for local markets. While men did most of the ploughing, women often participated in the harvest and were especially involved in the processing of the harvested grain.
Crops, equipment, and patterns of land usage varied across regions and from one period of economic development to the next. Nonetheless, some generalizations are useful. The predominance of grain production, legumous crops, viticulture, or pastoral farming in any given area was determined by climate and topography. Because cereal grains were a staple in the European diet, wheat, rye, barley, and oats were grown wherever the soil could be broken by the plough. The heavy, wheeled plough, pulled by a team of eight oxen, was the norm on the denser soils of northern Europe. In the later Middle Ages, an improved iron cutting edge that dug deeper into the soil and a moldboard that turned the soil to expose new nutrients made the plough more efficient and led to higher yields per acre. These improvements, along with the development of the horse collar, which allowed the team of oxen to be replaced by horses, helped to extend the arable land (or area under cultivation), as did the clearing of forests and drainage of swamps. With this extended arable area, many areas of western Europe were able to change from a two-field rotation of crops, with one field planted and one field lying fallow to rest and preserve its nutrients, to a system that allowed for one field to be used for a winter crop, such as wheat, one field for a spring crop, such as oats, and the third field to rest fallow. While this three-field crop rotation had the benefit of putting two-thirds of the arable land into production each year, it did not always guarantee a surplus crop, and peasant producers lived close to the margin of existence until the plague of the fourteenth century decimated the human population and made more land available to the survivors. The marginal nature of grain harvests from year to year meant that most grain production could supply only local or regional markets. Legumes, such as peas and beans, were likewise grown for local markets. Viticulture, or the cultivation of vines, played a significant role in the distribution of agricultural land and tasks in regions of France, Burgundy, and parts of Italy, and it allowed production for a larger, longdistance market. In the later Middle Ages, more land was devoted to the raising of sheep for wool, especially in parts of England, Italy, and Spain, and this too allowed producers to be involved in long-distance markets. Much of our knowledge of the intricate economic and social systems of agricultural production in the Middle Ages comes from records kept by the agents who managed the estates and held peasants to the terms of their contracts. Through these accounts we have learned that agricultural life was as socially complex as it was physically challenging.

By MADONNA J. HETTINGER in "WOMEN AND GENDER IN MEDIEVAL EUROPE, AN ENCYCLOPEDIA"- Margaret Schaus, Editor- Routledge (Taylor & Francis Group), New York-London, 2006, p. 11-12. Edited and adapted to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.

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