Peas and beans, and other grain legumes, have been on the decline for many decades. Archaeological records show their place in Scottish agriculture since early farming in the neolithic age. They were common once – and considered essential by some innovators such as the early Monastic farmers.
They had dual benefits – offering higher plant protein than cereal crops and enriching soil by fixing nitrogen from the air into their roots, and when the roots died the nitrogen went into the soil for next year’s crop. Despite the benefits, their growing in Scotland declined over time to a point in the 1930s where they had become rare as field crops..
Peas and beans have in recent times shown some signs of recovery as their benefits were rediscovered, especially since crop sequences that include legumes need less mineral fertiliser and hence contribute less to GHG emissions.
But it’s their value as food, in the form of peasemeal flatbreads and similar delights, that was told in a recent article by Pete Iannetta of the James Hutton Institute (reference to be added). So, as some further background, this note gives reference to peas and beans in crop rotations found in written sources from the 1400s to around a century ago.
Monastic enforcement
Many agricultural innovations were introduced in the centuries following the spread northwards of Christian religious houses from their base in France and southern England [1]. The monks’ stipulations, as related in Franklin’s (1952) account [2] of the Act of 1457 and later, read like a recipe for regenerative farming today – planting trees, hedges and broom parks, sowing crops such as wheat, peas, rye and beans in rotation (Act of 1472), and removing noxious weeds like corn marigold [3].
Franklin [2] states that – while the Acts were ‘almost universally disregarded’ – the Monks of Coupar inserted in their leases to farming tenants ‘a clause which ran roughly as follows’:
“And the said — shall put the land to every improvement in his power in building and fencing and planting trees, that is ashes, osiers, birch, willow and broom, with hawthorn fences and protection for them. And he shall keep his land free from corn marigold, and shall keep the acts of parliament in sowing wheat, peas, rye and beans, and shall labour for the gaining of the marsh.”
The gaining of the marsh presumably refers to wet boggy land generally, but more specifically to the Carse of Gowrie (south of Coupar and between the Sidlaw Hills and the Tay estuary), which as a result of that drainage and subsequent maintenance became one of the most productive agricultural areas in Scotland [4]. And it is also notable that the leguminous broom, and in other sources the leguminous even if spinous gorse, were cultivated as fodder crops, a practice that continued to within the last 100 years.
…… to be continued
Sources, references, links
The Living Field web has published numerous articles on grain legumes as crops and food. Here’s a selection (to be refined in the days ahead): Cornbread, peas and back molasses and 2 veg to pellagra. For random posts on pulses (peas and beans), see Feel the pulse, Peanuts to pellagra and Scofu: the quest for an indigenous Scottish tofu.
[1] Monastic expansion, agriculture and the use of plants- more on the Living Field web at Medicinals through the ages 1 , Medicinal Forage | Kinloss Abbey
[2] Franklin, T Bedford (1852) A history of Scottish Farming. Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd, Edinburgh (and London, Melbourne, Cape Town, Toronto, and New York).
[3] The corn marigold or gool(e), now a rare plant of cropland, was once considered a noxious weed, the toleration of which was considered a crime: link to the Living Field article – Gool rider, Gool rider.