Agriculture and economic growth: Biological innovations in European wheat production, 1820-1940

Abstract

This article analyzes the biological innovations in the European wheat sector during the XIXth century and the first third of the XXth century. In short, it deals with the different technical and economical circumstances that impelled them, the new wheat types that appeared and the different results in the major producer areas. The paper shows that these innovations were concentrated mostly in Atlantic Europe, while they were more difficult to implement in the Mediterranean agriculture, and that this circumstance conditioned the different patterns of agrarian growth.