"Where there's Muck there's Brass" The Market for Manure in the Industrial Revolution
Between 1700 and 1850, English grain yields were substantially higher than those attained in other countries. It is widely believed that yields were constrained by the availability of nitrogen, and that supplies of nitrogen were effectively limited to animal dung produced on the farm. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of off-farm sources of nitrogen, such as urban and industrial waste. We show that the use of off-farm nitrogen was both widespread and intensive by 1700, contrary to the received wisdom. We further argue that there was only modest growth in the use of off-farm nitrogen up to 1850. We explain this pattern of use of off-farm nitrogen by supply and demand factors. We use a new method of estimation to show that the overall impact was to raise wheat yields by a constant 20 per cent throughout the period.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
| Length: | 40 pages |
| Date of creation: | 01 Feb 2000 |
| Date of revision: | |
| Handle: | RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_035 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: https://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/economics/
|
References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
- Cormac Ó Gráda & Robert C. Allen, 1998.
"On the road again with Arthur Young : English, Irish, and French agriculture during the Industrial Revolution,"
Open Access publications
10197/374, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
- Allen, Robert C. & Ó Gráda, Cormac, 1988. "On the Road Again with Arthur Young: English, Irish, and French Agriculture during the Industrial Revolution," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 48(01), pages 93-116, March.
- Robert C. Allen & Cormac Ó Gráda, 1986. "On the road again with Arthur Young : English, Irish, and French agriculture during the Industrial Revolution," Working Papers 198645, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.
When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nuf:esohwp:_035. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Maxine Collett)
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.
If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.