Although the 19th century still experienced famines in some regions (especially Russia) and occasional disasters such as the potato famine of the 1840s, the pattern of regular subsistence crises that characterized early modern history ended by the middle of the 19th century. The average European diet was poor by twenty-first century standards, but it had significantly improved since the eighteenth century, producing better general health, greater resistance to disease, and higher rates of healthy reproduction.

The improved food supply is best seen in late eighteenth-century Britain, where the population explosion began. Despite restrictive tariffs on grain imports known as the Corn Laws, Britain imported an increasing amount of food after 1780, and this provided partial support for a larger population. British grain imports stood at 200,000 tons in 1780, rising to 3.7 million tons in 1800, and then 7.5 million tons in 1840. At the same time, the improvements in British internal transportation--canals, toll roads, and railroads--reduced food prices in urban areas. Food shipment also improved as new technology allowed the preservation of food for transportation, beginning with the adoption of a sterile canning process that a Parisian chef, Francois Appert, had invented for Napoleon's armies in 1804.

The greatest source of an improved food supply in Britain, however, was an increase in British harvests so significant that historians have called it an agricultural revolution. The agricultural revolution involved both extensive use of land (more acres planted) and intensive use of the land (higher yields per acre). The stimulus to both developments was simple: Grain prices rose with the population, previous bad harvests had left few grain reserves, and a generation of war with France sometimes interrupted the importation of grain (which fell from 4.6 million tons to 2.9 million tons in the years following 1810).

Extensive use of the soil provides obvious possibilities. Land could be reclaimed by draining marshes and wetlands, such as the fens of eastern England or the marshes of central Italy. In other regions of Europe, especially Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, sparsely populated woodlands and wildernesses could be cleared and planted. Wherever the science of agronomy established modern crop rotation, the tradition of leaving fields lie fallow every third year could be abandoned. This alone produced a 10 percent increase in arable land in some regions.

The most impressive side of the agricultural revolution--more intensive use of the land--achieved an unprecedented rise in European productivity. Scientific farming, such as improved understanding of fertilizers, significantly improved the harvest per acre. The beginnings of modern farm mechanization--from Jethro Tull's development of seed drills to replace the manual broadcasting of seeds to Andrew Meikle's invention of the threshing machine in 1784--produced more efficient harvests. Such developments increased the ratio of grain harvested to grain sown. In Britain, the wheat harvest went from a yield of 7-to-1 to a ratio of 10.6 to 1; at that rate, the British harvest was nearly twice as productive per acre as the rest of Europe and three times as successful as farming in eastern Europe. . . .

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