Roman Crop Rotation Results
End Farming Debate

Roman crop rotation, over three years, is one new idea that helps Roman villas produce more food. Combined with the growing system of Roman roads, the new province was able to feed its rapidly growing population.

Roman crop rotation or any other style, means changing the use of each field, to keep the soil rich and productive. It moves in a cycle, like most things at the villa or any other farm. Every farmer is concerned with careful management of the soil. He knows his farm or villa is only as good as its soil.

Huw, my manager tells me British farmers have always rotated crops, on a two year cycle. They plant corn - what you call wheat - in a field one year and let it lie fallow the next, before planting another corn crop. Please don't think 'lie fallow' means they don't use it. It was grazed, which is good for the soil and the farmer.

Successful Celtic farms produced what they needed to feed their families and plant the next crop, with a bit left over - to trade for things they needed that couldn't be made on the farm.

Since we came, there have been a lot more people to feed in Britannia. We introduced Roman crop rotation because Rome expects its provinces to feed themselves and the Army.

People living in towns have little if any land. Someone else must grow most of their food. Roman farming methods, proved they could produce more food from each field.

Roman crops rotate over three years. If a man has only three fields, he plants corn (to pay his taxes) in one field. He grazes his animals in another and plants beans and vegetables, to eat,in the third field. Over the next two years, he swaps the crops around. By the forth year he is back where he started.

Let us follow the cycle in one field.

YEAR ONE The Roman crop rotation pattern, in our field starts with sowing the GRAIN. Once it is harvested, the stubble left behind rots over the winter. Some washes into the soil, feeding it.

YEAR TWO The next spring the seeds that fell off during the harvest, sprout. Because wheat, barley and oats are all grasses - with really good seeds - the growing leaves are good for our animals to eat. The grazing animals prevent the GRASS growing enough to produce grain.

Other plants the animals like, tasty weeds, grow up and get eaten too. (We are always pulling out the harmful weeds.) The field is LYING FALLOW. It's having a rest.

YEAR THREE The third spring, the field is plowed and dug with hoes, to go back to work. We plant it with BEANS and all sorts of vegetables.

The next (forth) spring, the field is ploughed to plant another crop of GRAIN to begin the cycle again.

How Big is a Field ?

I think I should mention that a FIELD was not the same on every farm. We all called the piece of land we could plough in a day - a field. Roman Fields were a bit bigger because Roman ploughs were a bit better.

Please also remember that in our world, if we wanted a new field on our estate, we had to make it by cutting down a lot of trees and digging the roots out by hand. That was killing work, and our trees were precious. Forest management was another important job at the villa.

Change Comes Slowly in Farming

Once, some farmer in Italy, Greece or somewhere, realized that his bean fields were better than his corn - sorry - his wheat fields. He swapped the crops around, the next year, including his hay fields. His wheat crop was wonderful and he even grew more hay.

His neighbors noticed the change. They tried his trick and it worked. Word spread and crop rotation became the favorite way of doing things - because it worked. That's how things change for farmers, slowly. We like things that have been tried and tested and proven.

When we came to Britain, the native farmers noticed that we did things differently and some are still watching to see if Roman crop rotation gets better results than their old method. Many near Verulamium, have already adopted our cycle.

Roman Crop Rotation Was Only One Farming Innovation

Before we Romans came to Britain, no one grew enough vegetables to mention. They ate meat, fish, bread , beans and porridge. Their food was very boring. At the villa, we grow things like cabbage, peas, asparagus, salads like celery, cucumber and lettuce, and all sorts of roots, from radish to parsnips.

Root vegetables play an important part in Roman crop rotation. Harvesting them breaks up the soil again so the winter rain and frost can get in and kill off bugs that will harm the crops.

When we have taken the best for ourselves, the rest can be left on the ground as winter feed for our animals, who put more dung into the soil. Of course, the pigs will always dig up any roots we miss. They can plough a field as well as we can - but only where they choose.

Between the beans, all the vegetables and the animals' work, the field is well conditioned and ready for the next wheat crop.

The rotation is complete when the field is plowed for the next planting of grain. Each field goes through the same cycle of grain, pasture, beans and vegetables and back to grain again.

Roman Crop Rotation Includes Grass Management

Roman crop rotation, like the British two year cycle, treats grass as a crop. Hay is carefully dried grass. Not the sort of food we eat but most of our animals like it. Grass needs to be managed as carefully as our soil if we want enough hay to feed our animals through the winter.

Straw from the wheat fields is not good food for our animals. In the wettest British winters, straw can prevent paths on the villa turning into muddy troughs. We also use it for bedding - for ourselves and the stabled animals - for baskets and bee skeps.

In late spring, we move the animals out of the hay fields. They go to graze the damp river meadow, where the grass is still fresh and long. The river meadows are not included in the Roman crop rotation pattern.

When grazing our animals, we always put cows in a field first, when the grass is quite long. Once the grass is too short for them to wrap their tongues around, we move them to another, with longer grass. The grass in that first field will still be long enough for the sheep to graze, with their little clipper teeth.

When the soil is drying, in mid summer, we pay attention to the first important crop of the season, the hay. With the animals moved out, the pasture grass has grown tall. Before it is ready to seed and while it is still green, we cut it for winter feed. Every few days, we turn it over, till the sun has dried it .

Then it's ready to stack on wooden platforms that hold it up, off the wet, winter soil. We thatch the tops to help the rain run off. Damp hay rots. In hot weather with little wind, damp hay can burst into flames!

To enrich the soil, when the grass has grown long again, we put the cows back to graze it - then the sheep. What goes in the front end, always comes out the back end of the animals. Their dung rots and washes into the soil to make it rich. In a mild autumn, the grass will keep growing into October.

The short grass the sheep leave behind is easier to plough for the next crop, of beans and other vegetables.

Roman crop rotation conditions the soil and keeps it fertile to provide food for people and animals - not year after year but generation after generation.

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