Peasant Productivity and Welfare in The Middle Ages and Beyond.

This article focuses on the historiographical bias in the study of medieval English agriculture, which has predominantly relied on well-documented large demesne farms to represent the productivity of all arable land, neglecting the smaller peasant holdings that cultivated most farmland. It challenges the long-standing assumption that crop yields on large estates were representative of national productivity, presenting evidence that smallholders achieved substantially higher yields per acre through intensive labor inputs and diverse cultivation techniques. Comparative data from other historical periods and contemporary developing countries support an inverse relationship between farm size and land productivity, where smaller farms tend to be more productive per unit area despite lower labor productivity. The article argues that recognizing the higher productivity of peasant farms is crucial for accurate assessments of medieval England's economy, population welfare, and agricultural history.