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Agricultural Productivity in America and Eastern Europe: A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

John Komlos
John Komlos
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260
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Abstract

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Type
Notes and Discussion
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , September 1988 , pp. 655 - 664
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1988

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References

The author is Associate Professor of History and Economics at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260.

1 Clark, Gregory, “Productivity Growth without Technical Change in European Agriculture before 1850,” this JOURNAL, 47 (06 1987), pp. 419–32.Google Scholar

2 Ibid., p. 421.

3 Ibid., p. 431.

4 The share of labor was about 0.75. Gallman, Robert E., “Changes in Total U.S. Agricultural Factor Productivity in the Nineteenth Century,” in Kelsey, Darwin P., ed., Farming in the New Nation: Interpreting American Agriculture, 1790–1840 (Washington, D.C., 1972), pp. 191–210.Google Scholar

5 Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 419.Google Scholar

6 This includes corn. Without corn the share is only about 18 percent. For yields per acre see Parker, William N. and Klein, Judith L. V., “Productivity Growth in Grain Production in the United States, 1850–60 and 1900–10,” in National Bureau of Economic Research, Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, Studies in Income and Wealth, vol. 30 (New York, 1966), p. 542;Google ScholarU.S. Census Office, Seventh Census, 1850, Statistical View of The United States. … Being a Compendium of the Seventh Census, etc. DeBow, J. D. B., ed. (Washington, D.C., 1854), p. 178.Google Scholar

7 In 1859 in the Northeast 20 percent of the improved land was used for pasture; 43 percent was used for hay and potatoes. Atack, Jeremy and Bateman, Fred, To their Own Soil: Agriculture in the Antebellum North (Ames, 1987), p. 183.Google Scholar

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9 DeBow, , ed., Statistical View of The United States, p. 178.Google Scholar

10 Corn could be harvested even after the frost, as late as November. Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture: 1815–1860 (New York, 1960), vol. 3, p. 170;Google ScholarParker, William N., “A Note on Regional Culture in the Corn Harvest,” in Kelsey, Farming in the New Nation, pp.181–90.Google Scholar

11 Gates, , The Farmer's Age, p. 170.Google Scholar

12 Following Clark's method, grain production is divided by the total labor force engaged in agriculture, which, of course, also includes those who were not producing grain.

13 Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 422.Google Scholar

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17 In New England farmers close to the ocean profited enormously from collecting kelp and seaweed from the beach. Fish and fish heads, a byproduct of the export industry, were used as manure. About 10,000 whitefish might be put on an acre of land. Russell, Howard S., A Long, Deep Furrow: Three Centuries of Farming in New England (Hanover, 1976), pp. 311, 325.Google Scholar

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20 Gates, , The Farmer's Age, p. 281.Google Scholar

21 The plow “was heavy, badly constructed of wood with at most only the plowshare of iron—and sometimes not even that—it was hard to manage, and it cut a shallow furrow at the cost of much human and animal labor. Most households did not own a plow nor the six or eight animals often needed to pull it through the heavy soil.” Blum, , The End of the Old Order, p. 132. These factors limited the number of times a field could be plowed before sowing.Google Scholar

22 Clark, , “Productivity Growth,” p. 429.Google Scholar

23 Danhof, Clarence H., “The Tools and Implements of Agriculture,” in Kelsey, Darwin P., Farming in the New Nation, pp. 81–90.Google Scholar

24 Probably because it had a better reach and a greater force could be exerted with it. Russell, , A Long, Deep Furrow, p. 397.Google Scholar

25 Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 70.Google Scholar

26 In some places it was used until the end of the century. Sandgruber, Roman, österreichische Agrarstatistik 1750–1918 (Vienna, 1978), p. 115.Google Scholar

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29 “… by the early forties machine threshing had practically superseded the other methods in the leading wheat growing regions of the East …” Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 165;Google ScholarGalgoczi, Károly, Magyarország-, A Szerbvajdaság s Temesi Bánság Mezögazdasági Statisticája (Pest, 1855), p. 231.Google Scholar

30 Blum, Jerome, Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, 1815–1848: A Study in the Origins of the Peasant Emancipation of 1848 (Baltimore, 1948), p. 191.Google Scholar

31 Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 179. “Unless it is otherwise specified, all estimates of threshing with flail, … include winnowing.”Google Scholar

32 Ibid., p. 179.

33 Ibid., p. 180.

34 Ibid., p. 180.

35 In 1859 only 3 percent of northern wheat yields exceeded 16.6 bushels per acre. Atack, and Bateman, , To their Own Soil, pp. 166, 170.Google Scholar

36 Rogin, ,The Introduction of Farm Machinery, pp. 176–77, 179.Google Scholar

37 Ibid., p. 179.

38 Blum, , The End of the Old Order, p. 136.Google Scholar

39 Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p.188.Google Scholar

40 Benkö, Korizmics, and Morocz, , Mezei Gazdaság Könyve, vol. 2, p. 329.Google Scholar

41 Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 187.Google Scholar

42 Note that the threshing rate in America was also often 1/10; Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 178.Google Scholar

43 Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 125; Blum, Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 191.Google Scholar

44 Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 131.Google Scholar

45 The quality of the blade would have been another important factor determining the rate of performance, because the number of times reaping had to be interrupted in order to sharpen the scythe would have depended on it. Before one can say anything on comparative reaping performance one has to ascertain the quality of the scythes used in reaping.

46 Benkö, Korizmics, and Morocz, , Mezei Gazdaság Könyve, vol. 4, p. 419.Google Scholar

47 Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p. 190; Rogin, The Introduction of Farm Machinery, p. 16.Google Scholar

48 Galgoczi, , Magyarország-, A Szerbvajdaság, p. 234.Google Scholar

49 Blum, , Noble Landowners and Agriculture in Austria, p.190.Google Scholar

50 Clark, , “Productivity Growth”, p. 422.Google Scholar

51 Ibid.

52 Unless the rate at which grain was harvested is greatly overestimated. Rogin, , The Introduction of Farm Machinery, pp. 131–32.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., p 131.

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59 According to Blum, “The implements that the peasants used to work the fields contributed significantly to the inefficiency of their operations. Everywhere they employed tools whose design had changed little if at all over the course of the centuries and that were often ill-suited for the task for which they were used.” Moreover, “the inadequacy or the complete absence of transportation facilities made it difficult or impossible to reach markets, and so cooled possible interest in producing a surplus by the use of more efficient methods”. The End of the Old Order, pp. 118, 131. While the marginal tax rate in the United States was zero, in Eastern Europe it was generally 20 percent.Google Scholar