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019 – Agriculture

Content Warning

This comic contains humorous conversations about the bubonic plague.

More! Questions! This one is from Child. Child: Hi Dad! Thank you for the wonderful comics each month! I was thinking of asking a question about getting to know Dad better, but I saw on your website that you know a lot of things about 'the medieval agricultural crisis', and I'd love to know more about the subject! Love, Child You have no idea what you just unleashed. Dadvice Episode 19: Agriculture Full disclosure, I thought about brushing up on the subject because it’s been a minute since I took a history class... but that defeats the purpose, I think. So this is, as best as I can remember it from that one class on Economic History in 2015... The Medieval Agricultural Crisis! Picture it! Europe, 1350! The Bubonic Plague is all the rage! Death and despair sweeps the continent and after years of absolute devastation, one third of the population of Europe is dead. Already a bad situation. The trauma of a pandemic is real. Rebuilding is... a struggle. And then a new crisis emerge: with so many dead, there’s a severe lack of ablebodied workers to handle food production. You see, before the plague, the diet in Europe was a lot more vegetable focused. But tending the land in a time before tractors is hard work and requires a lot of workers. There’s simply not enough people left to grow the grains and vegetables needed to feed the continent. This is especially a problem in Northern Europe where I live. The climate and soil itself comes with its own limitations on what you can grow and in what quantities. Something that isn’t as limited by those things on the other hand... is live stock. Cows and sheep can graze on land that can’t be tilled. They eat plants we can’t digest. They also don’t need nearly as many people looking after them. In fact, up until relatively recently, it wasn’t uncommon in Sweden for children to herd cattle. Six-year olds were fully capable of looking after a group of sheep on their own. And so, facing labor shortages and starvation, parts of Europe switched to a diet focused mainly on meat and dairy. Lots of calories for a fraction of the labor! And that’s the Medieval Agricultural Crisis! Next time, something else! Love ya, kiddo!