L'évolution des techniques agricoles en Flandre et en Brabant : XIVe-XVIe siècle

Résumé En

While agricultural technology was essentially stagnant in most of Europe during the Late Middle Ages and Modern Times, agriculture methods in Flanders and Braband underwent important changes. These improvements began toward the end of the XIIIth century and lead progressively to an increase in cereal production and to great diversification of crops which become particularly noticeable in the first half of the XVIth century. The cultivation of legumes and the systematic and ingenious exploitation of all available ingredients to produce fertilizer (in particular straw, animal, human and other organic refuse) played an important role in this development. Also associated with these practices were the cultivation of fallow land, the introduction of new rotations (occasionally including temporary meadows) and new methods of cattle-breeding. Several favourable circumstances made these changes possible : among the most important were the high population density of the region which was only lightly affected by the Black Death and the relative freedom the peasants enjoyed in adopting new techniques. It seems that they were bound neither by a strictly enforced three-fields system nor by a systematic three-year rotation.