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Agriculture in the Middle Ages
During the Middle Ages, Muslim farmers in North Africa and the Near East
developed and disseminated agricultural technologies including irrigation
systems based on hydraulic and hydrostatic principles, the use of machines such
as norias, and the use of water raising machines, dams, and reservoirs. Muslims
also wrote location-specific Farming manuals, and were instrumental in the wider
adoption of crops including sugar cane, rice, citrus fruit, apricots, cotton,
artichokes, aubergines, and saffron. Muslims also brought lemons, oranges,
cotton, almonds, figs and sub-tropical crops such as bananas to Spain.
Renaissance to Present Day
A tractor ploughing an alfalfa fieldThe invention of a three field system of
crop rotation during the Middle Ages, and the importation of the
Chinese-invented moldboard plow, vastly improved agricultural efficiency.
After 1492, a global exchange of previously local crops and livestock breeds
occurred. Key crops involved in this exchange included the tomato, maize,
potato, cocoa, tobacco, and coffee.
By the early 1800s, agricultural practices, particularly careful selection of
hardy strains and cultivars, had so improved that yield per land unit was many
times that seen in the Middle Ages. With the rapid rise of mechanization in the
late 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the form of the tractor, farming
tasks could be done with a speed and on a scale previously impossible. These
advances have led to efficiencies enabling certain modern farms in the United
States, Argentina, Israel, Germany, and a few other nations to output volumes of
high quality produce per land unit at what may be the practical limit.
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