Tull, Jethro

SUBJECT AREA: Agricultural and food technology

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b. 30 March 1674 Basildon, Essex, England

d. February 1741 Hungerford, Berkshire, England

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English farmer who developed and publicized a system of row crop husbandry.

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Jethro Tull was born into an English landowning family. He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, but left without a degree at the age of 17. He then spent three years on the Grand Tour before returning to study law at Gray's Inn in London. After six years he was admitted to the Bar, but he never practised, moving instead to one of his father's farms near Oxford.

Because of labour problems he chose to plant sainfoin (Onobrychis viciaefolia) as a forage crop because it required less frequent reseeding than grass. The seed itself was expensive and of poor fertility, so he began to experiment. He discovered that the depth of sowing as well as the planting rate influenced germination and the rate of growth, he found the optimum rate could be gained with one plant per ft2, a much lower density than could be achieved by broadcasting. His experiments created labour problems. He is traditionally and incorrectly credited with the invention of the seed drill, but he did develop and use a drill on his own farm to achieve the planting rate and depth he needed without having to rely on his workforce.

In 1711 Tull became ill and went to France, having first sold his original farm and moved to "Properous", near Hungerford. In France he developed a husbandry technique that used a horse hoe to stir the soil between the rows of plants achieved with his drill. He incorrectly believed that his increased yields were the result of nutrients released from the soil by this method, whereas they were more likely to have been the result of a reduction in weed competition as a result of the repeated cultivation.

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Bibliography

1731, The New Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, or an Essay on the Principals of Tillage and Vegetation (sets out the ideas and innovations for which he was already well known).

Further Reading

T.H.Marshall, 1929, "Jethro Tull and the new husbandry of the 18th century", Economic History Review 11:41–60 (the relevance and significance of Tull's work was already under discussion before his death; Marshall discusses the controversy).

G.E.Fussell, 1973, Jethro Tull. His Influence on Mechanised Agriculture (presents a pro- Tull account).

AP