The fruits of better roads and waterways: Facilitating fertiliser improvement through transport innovations in 18th-century Flemish Husbandry

Abstract

Whereas the consensus is growing that access of rural production to urban markets improved thanks to new transport infrastructure, the question of whether improved water and road transport also favoured agricultural productivity through the supply of urban and industrial fertilisers has remained unanswered. Taking the smallholding economy of inland Flanders as a case-study, this article shows that improved transport infrastructure did not create a demand market for agricultural inputs by itself. It was commercial opportunities or challenges and social circumstances (such as increasing farm rents) that stimulated cultivators to change their farming strategies (e.g. buying more off-farm fertilisers), whereas new transport infrastructure only helped to ease the supply of agricultural inputs such as off-farm fertilisers in a period when demand for these inputs was increasing.