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At the beginning of the eighteenth century more than half the population of England worked on the land or in a trade, such as milling, that was connected with agriculture. Most of the Land was owned by rich aristocrats of gentry who rented it out to tenant farmers. These famers paid labourers to work for them. Strip Farming: In much of England, farming used the "open field" system, which involved dividing a village's fields into …

…labourers lost their jobs, and there were preiods when even the great landowners found it hard to make money from farming. As transport improved and refrigeration and canning were introduced, farmers also faced competition from abroad. This competition, together with a run of wet summers, led to terrible hardships in the 1870's. British farming had to become even more efficient before it could provide enough food at a cheap price for the country's industrial workers.