introduction
In a previous article, I have introduced to you in general the medieval agricultural revolution in Europe, focusing on environmental changes, the popularization of Saxon wheel ploughs, the innovation of harnesses, and the important impact of factors such as the two-bed system and the three-garden system on the development of European agriculture, but because of the limited space, I did not introduce you in detail the early agricultural farming system in medieval Europe in that article, resulting in the lack of intuitive impression of the early agricultural development of Europe, so today's article, I will introduce you to the early agricultural management system in medieval Europe before the emergence of the three-garden system.
The agricultural management system characteristic of Early Medieval Europe
Speaking of the agricultural farming system implemented in the early Middle Ages in Europe, I believe that many people do not have a concept, many people have heard of the famous three-garden system, but it should be pointed out that the emergence of the three-garden system will not wait until the 8th century AD, and its full popularization will wait until the 13th century, so it is not the agricultural system implemented in early medieval Europe.
So what methods did the Germanic barbarians who settled down in the early European Middle Ages use to cultivate the land?
The first is the most primitive slash-and-burn farming, which is the traditional agricultural cultivation method of the Germans, who have been using this method to grow grain as early as when they watched wild boar teeth in the Black Forest. Specifically, it is to find a relatively flat piece of land, and then a fire will burn all the trees, shrubs and weeds on the land to ashes. When the fire was extinguished, they used a "Y-shaped" branch as a plough to loosen the soil for the land, and then sowed the seeds of grain to wait for it to mature.
This kind of agriculture was entirely dependent on the heavens, so the Germans also worked part-time hunting and animal husbandry to support themselves. A big problem with slash-and-burn agriculture is that it consumes a lot of soil power, so the Germans will constantly migrate, abandoning the old cultivated land and looking for new land to burn.
Tip: When farming in ancient times, there was an important factor to pay attention to, that is, soil fertility. In ancient times, when there was no fertilizer and no other fertilizers, as long as a piece of land was planted with grain, the fertility of the soil was a very expensive thing, which would directly affect the growth of crops and their yields, so farmers either replaced the new land or had to find a way to restore the soil.
However, not all Germans used this primitive method of farming, at least not the Germans who migrated to the territory of the Roman Empire to learn the ancient Roman farming methods. But the embarrassing thing is that the ancient Roman agricultural planting methods, popular in the non-core area, is a kind of early extensive agriculture, although later they have more advanced tools and organizations, there are agricultural experts have recognized how to increase the fertility of the land, know how to use fallow, composting and other methods to restore the soil, etc., began to try more advanced agricultural methods, and even began to try the land continuous cropping system, some places also developed irrigated agriculture, suspected of having a three-year rotation system.
Agriculture of the Romans
Worse still, this more advanced agriculture did not spread in the Germanic settlements, and most of what the Germans learned was the extensive agricultural system of the ancient Romans. However, it was also stronger than the Germans, and the frontier areas where the Germans gathered were completely different from the environment and soil fertility of the core of the Romans, after all, the volcanic ash that could fertilize the land, the dense agricultural population and the irrigation methods were not everywhere.
Later, as the Western Roman Empire was finally crushed by the Germans for a series of reasons, the knowledge and technology of the ancient Romans fell into a low point, and began to "stagnate" or even "regress". For hundreds of years, technology, culture and social development have "regressed and stagnated" (in fact, it is only slow development), Europe has entered the "dark age", and European agriculture has finally changed back to extensive agriculture.
In the early Middle Ages, The agricultural output of Europe declined considerably compared with before, but the Peoples of Farack (a germanic tribe) who settled after the Romans took over the agricultural tools in the hands of the Romans, learned their simple knowledge, and combined their own experience and environment to cultivate the land of Europe.
At that time, there were several land cultivation systems popular in Europe, one of which was the continuous cultivation and recess system (also known as the temporary tillage system), that is, the continuous cultivation of a piece of farmland opened up for several years, after the thorough squeezing of the soil power, it was abandoned for a few years, regardless of the period, after a few years, the fertility of the soil returned to normal under the great power of nature, the farmers returned to the land again, burned the land, and then continued to cultivate - abandon.
This land cultivation system is very old, and the cost is still very low, which is a progressive version of slash-and-burn farming, but it is also predatory extensive farming, and many ethnic groups have adopted this farming method in history. Other Europeans choose to cultivate one and rest two systems, that is, to cultivate a piece of land for one year, then fallow for two years, during which time they will find other land scourges, and then rotate to plant after the original land is fallow for two years. In addition, they have a progressive version of the farming system, which is to temporarily cultivate most of a piece of land, leaving only a small part to keep fertilizing (they lack the ability and idea to fertilize all the land), which is somewhat different from the first two methods.
All three farming systems have major drawbacks, namely that land tenure is very low, and it is only suitable for places with small populations and large land, such as Europe, which was sparsely populated in the early Middle Ages:
"In Gaul (present-day France) in the 6th century, the population density per square kilometer was only 5.5 people..." Excerpt from "A Comparative Study of Feudal Society in China and the West"
When with the development of the times, the population of Europe slowly increased, the traditional slash-and-burn type, continuous cultivation and fallow farming methods are no longer suitable, in order to support more people, European agriculture is bound to further develop, at this time, the knowledge left by the Romans and the experience of the Germans themselves came in handy.
The erpu system, which was more advanced than the predatory extensive farming method of continuous cultivation, began to revive and popularize, and was the most typical and important agricultural farming system in western Europe in the early days after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
The so-called two-garden system divides a large piece of cultivated land into two parts, and only one piece of cultivated land is cultivated each year, so that the other piece of cultivated land is in a state of fallow, and then the two pieces of cultivated land are rotated every year, that is, the land used for cultivation in the first year, the fallow in the second year, and so on.
Compared with the continuous cultivation and continuous rest system, the utilization rate of the land has increased a lot, but for the cultivated land in the fallow state under the two-garden system, many Europeans in the early days will still choose to completely abandon the fallow land, do not plant any crops on it, at most when the fallow land is overgrown with weeds, the sheep will be caught up to eat grass, and then excrete some feces as nutrients. Later, Europeans began to grow forage on fallow land (many expressed doubts), to fix nitrogen and feed livestock, which is very characteristic of European agriculture - a combination of farming and animal husbandry.
harvest