farming

Between the medial time period and 1800 the farming system was a basic but an effective system this was called the 'open field system'. At the end of 1800 there was another type being introduced this was called the 'enclosed field system'.This lead to more food production and this meant the farmers could gather more and more food to sell.

this is an example of an open field system.

this is an example of an enclosed field system.

 Increasingly, people enclosed and managed their woodlands by copping to obtain sustainable supplies of fuel for charcoal for gunpowder and iron making, and for tanbark and oak to split for basket weaving. New techniques also led to increased energy efficiency, e.g.charcoal production, of which fast quantities of charcoal was needed. Around industrial cities such as Sheffield in England, woodlands were carefully managed to sustain the cities steel production. This was soo efficient that the inferior fule of coal did not replace charcoal until the 1820s. The response to the wood shortage was the shift to a new fuel: coal. Britain had enough of it and there were many seams at the surface, easy to exploit, especially in the Tyneside area around Newcastle. Despite the obvious dependency on wood, Europeans cleared forests to create arable land to feed a growing population, placing pressure on the forests.