Medieval agriculture

by Alfapiomega

Hello everyone,

I turn to you with a (sort of) broader questions.

A little background first: I am trying to learn programming by working on a game that takes place in a fantasy medieval ages. However my goal is to create a realistic representation of the medieval life around the year 1000 and now that I have created a sort of OK system for weather generation and simulation I was wondering if anyone here has any idea or information about how medieval agriculture worked? Now I checked wikipedia and several books in the past few weeks but I still am not sure about answers to these questions (the game will take place in a tempered climate):

a) What factors went into medieval agriculture? Obviously one is weather but at what time did peasants what? What weather was desirable at which month and what weather was really, really bad fir them? How much rain was good, did they like snow and wished for cold winters or preferred mild as far as agriculture goes?

b) How many people could a man working on the field support with the output? How much place was he able to work on? How much time did it consume?

c) How good was hunting as far as food yield went? How many people was a hunter able to support on average?

d) What happened in case of a catastrophic harvest? I am sure hunting/gathering was a thing but could it put an isolated village through entire season if the fields yielded poor/no harvest?

e) How long could they store the harvest before it went bad? In what form did they store the harvest?

f) As far as i.e. vegetables, apples and other products went how were they stored/consumed as they are seasonal food? Did they have any during late winter-spring?

g) As far as dietary habits go how big was a role of for example fishing, gathering etc. around year 1000 for the people?

h) Anything specific that I didn't think about that I should know about?

I am of course aware these are quite broad topics so if there are some good books/online sources please point me towards those first. Plus I won't mind shorter answers with suggestions where to look for broader explanations. I just have problem finding more about this in any books that deal with medieval life. They all explain feudalism and basic things about what they worked with and the fields but not about the above :/

Thank you in advance for any reply! I really appreciate this reddit being in existence :)

Thank you in advance for any reply! I really appreciate this reddit being in existence :)

Instantcoffees

I'm by no means and expert, but I did some research on late medieval agriculture in Europe. Agriculture could be widely diverse, depending on the region. That being said, I'll try to share some things I remember, keep in mind that I'm not a native speaker so some of the terms used might be less common in English :

a. This depends on the kind of products. Generally they used to Three-field system combined with different products. When they should plant what was largely determined by experimental knowledge passed on through generations. It also differs from region to region. Keep in mind that potatoes weren't widely used untill around 1700, so there was much more incentive to diversify production based on region and climate. Generally, mild weather was desired. They realized that both draughts or intensive rain were equally bad for most crops. Especially too much stagnant water when the temperature was somewhat warm could yield bad results for a lot of crops.

b. All depends on the crop and the amount of land. Some crops had shorter cycles and needed to be harvested often, others required a lot less care and planning. What you would often see were bigger farmers recruiting the help of the local community when it came to harvesting. In exchange, they could for example use his horse to plow their fields - if already common practice in the region in question. Networking within local communities was often very important. People relied on eachother and helped eachother out.

c. In most medieval regions, hunting would be reserved for the local elite. Those popular stories about commoners getting caught punished for poaching, aren't too far fetched. That being said, most local communities had "common grounds" and "common forests". These common grounds were usually grassy fields were everyone who owned cattle (usually only the bigger farmers) could let them graze. The "common forests" were sometimes used for hunting small game, but mostly they were used for foraging.

d. Catastrophic field yields would often lead to hunger and sometimes even death. People would become malnourished and die to disease, cold or simply hunger. Especially towards the later middle-ages, you have to remember that many farmers weren't producing for themselves. Sure, they sometimes had their own little field where they would grow crops for personal use, but a lot of them were producing products for a market. Ranging from beer production to the production of clothes. This is especially true for the regions in Central Europe. For example the Low Countries were as early as 1400 dependant on grain importation from Baltic regions. Producing for a market occured much earlier though, check this out of you are interested. Some more remote regions were more self-sustainable, but they would still be in dire straits when disaster struck. In some more populated regions, local municipalities would store grain just in case, but this usually only made things slightly more bearable.

e. Again, depends on the product. Most grains could be stored fairly long and effectively and thus was often used as a "backup" for when crop yields were dissapointing.

f. Mostly seasonal food. There were some methods to keep products "fresh" longer, but this was all fairly limited. I'm not sure how widespread this was, but sometimes fruit which was starting to turn bad would be used or sold in order to make beverages.

g.Hard to gauge. Depends on the region. Obviously fishing was more important in some regions. When there were fishing grounds or grounds to forage upon present, they were often used as an important supplement to the local diet. Also keep in mind that in Central Europe at this time, most people were Catholic and a big portion of their diet and how they interpreted the yield of their crops was related to religion. Again, it differs from region to region.