War, Wheat, and Crop Diseases of the Late Enlightenment: Contesting and Producing Evidence in Agriculture in Great Britain

Abstract

This chapter surveys the different evidence cultures that were contested and developed during the close of the eighteenth century, when the dual threats of war and famine gave rise to the Board of Agriculture in 1793. The Board of Agriculture was established by the British parliament to produce statistical surveys of Britain's agricultural output and also to identify scientific cultivation practices for increasing yields; but from its inception, the nascent Board of Agriculture found itself to be heavily dependent upon the observations and expertise of practicing farmers. This led to a crisis within the Board's efforts to promote scientific approaches to cultivation. In the absence of so-called “experimental farms,” how, precisely, did the observations of practicing farmers constitute evidence supporting their own cultivation practices? In the efforts of the Board to develop scientific accounts of crop diseases attacking staple varieties of wheat and potatoes, the validity of evidence and the question of its provenance and its legitimacy all came into sharp contrast. In the effort to enlist Britain's farmers into the ranks of scientific practice, the field became a key site where Enlightenment-era ideals served mediating roles between traditional evidence practices and local knowledge.