Food (3.2): Peasants Again & Lands at Last

So, now we know what the most basic demographics of our country, city or even large village is 75–90% peasants. But why that many? And why the number drops that much in the more recent times?

Agriculture and productivity

Basically, all the food peasants (or, earlier in the ancient times, slaves) produced on the cropland was eaten, either by the peasants and their families, or by the people who did not produce any food themselves: warriors/aristocracy, clergy, artisans, merchants.

90% peasants in the demographic mix mean it takes 9 good landworking families to support one non-peasant family of similar size: basically, one farmer fed 1.1 people. The more optimistic 75% implies that a peasant was able to feed much more, 1.3 people. Early Modern technologies didn’t change farming that much: in 1800 England, 1 peasant fed 2 people, which is an improvement, but not that impressive.

But since, productivity grew tremendously and separated the demographic structure from the land. Currently, one tractor-operated and well-fertilized farm in the USA feeds 166 people, and there are overall less than 2% of farmers in the population. Now, voluntary decline of fertility is more of a problem than the deficit of food in developed countries.

But overall, the productivity decides only the determines only the demographic structure (and, in the long-term, the potential for growth). Current population is constrained only by the available fertile land.

Land requirements: croplands per capita

What happens in the long-term (and everything in the Middle Ages is long-term, economic history was just that much slower then) is that the population growth is very rapid as far as there are new lands to cultivate and thus feed the new hungry peasants, and then slows down to a crawl as soon as the cropland expansion stops.

And here I’ve found an epic source on the per capita land usage here.

Basically, the earliest possible reliable estimate of cropland usage comes from Ancient Egypt at 4.6 ha (hectares) per capita in 4000 BC (before current era), six thousand years ago. It is also the largest per person land usage estimate ever: ancient Egyptians were among the first fully agricultural civilizations, and the technology honestly su… wasn’t the best that far ago. Since then, productivity grew rather slowly, given the timeframe: Egyptians used 1.7 ha per person in 3000 BC, about 1 ha in 2000 BC, 0.8 ha around 1000 BC, and finally 0.6 hectares at 150 BC. It is more or less similar to the rough estimate of 0.5 ha per capita in Greece around 1 CE (current era, the normal years).

Then comes the Roman Empire. Apparently, according to Cato the Elder, Roman farmers used from 1.3-2.1 ha per person for cropland around 150 BC, but the number may be way overshot: the calculations don’t include townspeople, and the Roman-era Italy had a lot of cities.

Strangely, earliest Medieval tribes use surprisingly little land for agriculture. Around 600 CE, relatively reliable calculations place land use at 0.27 ha for cropland and 0.54 ha per capita for pastures in Germany. However, in 1000–1200, the land use grew to around 2 ha of cropland and 2 ha of pasture per person: apparently, relatively small tribal population in the early Middle Age lived more by hunting and fishing then by farming. Later, the better tools allowed cultivating more land and growing larger population, no longer sustainable by the game meat and fish, and the land use returned to the local norm.

In the most representative Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Sweden (1000 CE) and England (1086 CE, the Domesday data strikes again) have more or less similar levels at 1.0 and 0.94 ha of cropland per person.

Afterwards, we have a very comprehensive set of data for England in Allen (2005): in 1300, the land usage was similar to the Domesday-era at 0.97, decreased to 0.85 in 1700, just before the Industrial Revolution, and then plummeted to 0.5 in 1800 and 0.35 ha per capita in 1850. For comparison, in 1960 the Food and Agriculture Organization estimated cropland usage in England at 0.14 ha per person.

Where to start?

So, the most basic question is the location: South or North.

Agriculture started sooner in the South/Mediterranean area, and for a good reason: climate is much better for crops over there than in continental Europe. The oldest and least impressive farming techniques required 4.5 ha of cropland per person in 4000 BC, but the better equipment and knowledge decreased the required area to 2 ha in 3000 BC, 1 ha in 2000 BC, 0.8 ha in 1000 BC, and stabilized at about 0.5 ha just before 1 CE.

The agriculture works much worse in the North: the population was barely even there before the Middle Ages and apparently lived largely by the forests in the early Middle Ages with measly 0.2–0.3 ha cropland per capita. In the “most middle” Middle Ages in the Western Europe the land usage was around 1 ha per person, and slowly decreased to 0.7 before the Industrial Revolution.

Thus, the most typical “Southern” Medieval country (e.g. Byzantine Empire, Italy, Egypt) has about 0.5 ha of cropland per person, the most typical “Northern” Medieval country (e.g. England) uses 1 ha per person. Pre-Medieval “Southern” countries use more land up to 4–5 ha per capita in the most ancient times, people in pre-Medieval “Northern” cultivate less land, but spend more time hunting in the primordial European forest.