Scottish Agricultural Revolution

The Agricultural Revolution in Scotland was a series of changes in agricultural practice that began in the seventeenth century and continued in the nineteenth century. They began with the improvement of Scottish Lowlands farmland and the beginning of a transformation of Scottish agriculture from one of the least modernised systems to what was to become the most modern and productive system in Europe. The traditional system of agriculture in Lowland Scotland had existed unchanged for hundreds of years, the land being worked by the cottars on the centuries-old runrig system of subsistence farming.

The term Scottish Agricultural Revolution was used in the early twentieth century primarily to refer to the period of most dramatic change in the second half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. More recently historians have become aware of a longer processes, with change beginning in the late seventeenth century and still continuing into the mid-nineteenth century. The expansion of the period covered has led some to question the concept of a revolution.

Before the seventeenth century, with difficult terrain, poor roads and methods of transport there was little trade between different areas of the country and most settlements depended on what was produced locally, often with very little in reserve in bad years. Most farming was based on the lowland fermtoun or highland baile, settlements of a handful of families that jointly farmed an area notionally suitable for two or three plough teams, allocated in run rigs, of "runs" (furrows) and "rigs" (ridges), to tenant farmers. Most ploughing was done with a heavy wooden plough with an iron coulter, pulled by oxen, which were more effective in the heavy Scottish soil, and cheaper to feed than horses. Those with property rights included husbandmen, lesser landholders and free tenants. Below them were the cottars, who often shared rights to common pasture, occupied small portions of land and participated in joint farming as hired labour. Farms also might have grassmen, who had rights only to grazing. Three acts of parliament passed in 1695 allowed the consolidation of runrigs and the division of common land.

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