Quick Facts
Born:
1674, Basildon, Berkshire, Eng.
Died:
Feb. 21, 1741, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, Berkshire (aged 67)
Subjects Of Study:
crop production

Jethro Tull (born 1674, Basildon, Berkshire, Eng.—died Feb. 21, 1741, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, Berkshire) was an English agronomist, agriculturist, writer, and inventor whose ideas helped form the basis of modern British agriculture.

Tull trained for the bar, to which he was called in 1699. But for the next 10 years he chose to operate his father’s farm in Oxfordshire, on which about 1701 he perfected a horse-drawn seed drill that economically sowed the seeds in neat rows. This was a notable advance over the usual practice of scattering the seeds by hand. In 1709 Tull bought a farm of his own in Berkshire. While later traveling in France and Italy, he was impressed by the cultivation methods in use in the vineyards, wherein the rows of earth between the vines had been pulverized. This reduced the need for manure and increased aeration and the access of water to and from plant roots, though Tull mistakenly believed that earth was the food of plants and that pulverization made it easier for plants to absorb it. He developed a horse-drawn hoe and successfully adopted the vineyard method to his farm. His success led to the publication of his The New Horse Houghing Husbandry: Or an Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation (1731). Tull’s methods were initially subjected to violent attack, but they were eventually adopted by the large landowners and laid the basis for more modern and efficient British farming.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Quick Facts
Date:
c. 1700 - c. 1850
Location:
Durham
Norfolk
United Kingdom
England
Context:
Industrial Revolution

agricultural revolution, gradual transformation of the traditional agricultural system that began in Britain in the 18th century. Aspects of this complex transformation, which was not completed until the 19th century, included the reallocation of land ownership to make farms more compact and an increased investment in technical improvements, such as new machinery, better drainage, scientific methods of breeding, and experimentation with new crops and systems of crop rotation.

Among those new crop-rotation methods was the Norfolk four-course system, established in Norfolk county, England, which emphasized fodder crops and the absence of the theretofore conventionally employed fallow year. Wheat was grown in the first year and turnips in the second, followed by barley, with clover and ryegrass undersown in the third. The clover and ryegrass were cut for feed or grazed in the fourth year. In the winter, cattle and sheep were fed the turnips. The development of Shorthorn beef cattle through selective breeding of local cattle of the Teeswater district, Durham county, typified the advances brought about by scientific breeding.

The historiography of the period that emphasized the contributions of “great men” has lost much of its influence, but the names Jethro Tull and Arthur Young are still frequently invoked by those seeking to understand the significance of the agricultural revolution, which was an essential prelude to the Industrial Revolution.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Jeff Wallenfeldt.