Cultivation ridges in theory and practice : cultural ecological insights from Ireland

This study involves historical, ethnographic, and experimental investigations of agricultural ridged fields and associated farming practices in grassland environments. The literature review was global. Fieldwork was in Ireland, but implications pertain to similar features elsewhere. For theoretical purposes, the study considers rational decision-making pivotal to the temporal and spatial distribution of ridged-fields relative to level-field alternatives. The goal of the study, therefore, was to compare efficiencies in the economy of scarce resources, including labor, land, manure, tools, seed, and yields, and to compare subsistence risk from crop disease. This required analyzing the movements of body, tools, and soils in the field, calculating the time involved, and measuring effects on field forms, soil quality, micro-climates, and yields. Fieldwork in 1994 and 1995 included observations and interviews at traditional plow and spade competitions. Test plot experiments compared ridged and level field production from primary tillage through the harvest seasons. The analyses established significant labor- and yield-related variables, such as the linear measure of sod cutting, number of sods turned, and seed-furrow forms and spacing. They also provided local, case-study examples of labor inputs and agronomic results. The data suggest that prevailing ideas about ridging are in need of revision. They confirm that ridging can increase yields, reduce erosion, increase soil organic matter and fertility, and suppress bacterial and fungal pathogens, relative to level fields. The data also demonstrate that ridging can require less labor than level field tillage and is not necessarily a more complex technological invention. These observations may help explain the early, independent, and varied origins of ridge forms in Ireland and elsewhere. The variables of population density, markets, technology, farm size, frequency of cultivation, fallow practices, crops, fertility inputs, and bio-physical environments all affect the comparative costs and benefits, and the rational choice, between ridged and level fields. These variables modify the results of the fieldwork in logical ways for different contexts. Discussion of the field results and qualifiers in concert, sheds new light on the global distribution and timing of ridged field origins, persistence, obsolescence, absence, and future prospects