The lives of farmers have changed drastically over the ages. For this paper, imagine yourself as a farmer in different eras of history, and I will use historical information to determine how your life is and how you might’ve seen the world.

Ah, farming in the Roman Empire. You knew your nomadic ancestors adapted farming to get more food for less work, and now you were in a pinnacle of achievement:  giant farms that required rather little effort. Of course, your slaves did the actual effort, but you had little incentive to drive them very hard (and they had little incentive to work very hard either). After all, your farm did not require efficiency or massive yields – it was so big that surely enough food would grow. Granted, only you and a handful of other very powerful aristocrats had these massive plantations (or latifundia as they were known at the time) but they were extensive – which basically meant they relied on size rather than labor or resources to get food grown. How did you see the universe? Times were good. 


But then the Roman Empire came to an end and these gargantuan plantations were replaced by tiny farms owned by peasants. Now, as a medieval peasant, you had plenty of reason to work as hard as you could on that tiny square of land you owned. Because it was so small and your survival depended on getting as much food as possible from it, you wanted that farm running as efficiently as possible. 

Thus, you had a lot more incentive to utilize every farming technique and technology you could get your hands on, unlike your ancestor in the Roman Empire. That puny stick your ancestors called a plow wouldn’t do, you need to use a heavy plow to get the job done. Heavy plows were, as their name implies, heavy – needing a big team of oxen to pull it. You probably couldn’t afford such a team by yourself… but perhaps if you and all the other peasant farmers next to you all chipped in, you could all share one heavy plow and use it on all of your fields. Especially with those blasted lords of the land insisting on you all working for their benefit.
Because of this, corporation between the peasants and even the lords were encouraged because it meant more crops for everyone. Because of new horse collars from China and later the invention of horseshoes, Oxen got replaced by horses as the plow pullers. Different crops better suited to the climate were grown, and the concept of “crop rotation” was born as different crops were grown at different times to maximize productivity and to minimize the effects of sudden pest swarms or bad weather eating or destroying your crops. But after all of this hard work, perhaps you would be nostalgic for the comparatively lazy days of Roman farmers. How did you see the universe? You wanted the glory days of Rome back.
