Throughout the European Middle Ages, important technological innovations emerge that will bring some positive elements to the work of the peasants. The main innovations in medieval agriculture were due to the greater dynamism of the feudal mode of production, which meant for the serfs a greater incentive in the improvement of production than for the slaves. The Parties of Alfonso X de Castilla define the peasants within the estates society as those who till the land and fazen in it those things for which men have to live and to maintain. This active peasantry was the fundamental force of work in medieval society.
The change of the ox for the horse as a draft animal was the result of two technological advances - the use of the horse and the development of the collar - that allowed the horse to pull more loads more easily. This increased the efficiency of land transport, both for trade and for military campaigns, and added to the overall improvement of the road network, increased commercial opportunities for better communicated rural communities. In some areas with especially fertile land, the rotation of three-leaf crops was introduced (three-year rotation, associating a spring cereal or a legume to a winter cereal), which reduced to 33% instead of 50% the need for fallow in front of the system of year and time, increasing production and making it more diversified. The possibility of subscribing, was restricted to the availability of associated livestock, which, in the areas and periods in which it increased, had an important impact on peasant life, although not always positive for farmers, whose interests were in contradiction with the of the breeders, usually of privileged condition (the Council of the Mesta and similar livestock associations in the peninsular Christian kingdoms). The example of the monasteries, especially of the Benedictine order expanded throughout Western Europe (Cluny and Cîteaux), extended agricultural practices, property management and food industry. In areas of southern Europe (Muslim Sicily and Spain), the Arabs introduced agricultural improvements, especially in irrigation systems (water wells in Murcia, ditches in Valencia), the use of hillsides (terraces of the Alpujarras), flood zones ( rice) and the intensive cultivation of orchards, with the generalization of Mediterranean fruit trees (orange trees, almonds) and all kinds of vegetables, which will characterize the stereotype of the feeding of the peasants subjected to these areas, of Muslim origin, in front of the Christian conquerors (villain tired of garlic called Don Quixote Sancho). The introduction of the use of heavy plows (with wheels and moldboard) allowed a deeper cultivation of soils in northern Europe (was incorporated throughout the eleventh century in the regions north of the Alps, while the fragile soils of the Mediterranean area were still linked to the Roman plow).
The hydraulic mills (later the windmills introduced from Persia) increased significantly the productivity of work, as well as the gradual improvement of agricultural tools, such as new types of tracks, sickles and scythes.
See also: Agricultural revolution of medieval Islam
These changes caused a growth, as much in the variety as in the quantity of the harvests, that had important effects in the diet of the population. The field was the great protagonist in the European Full Age. The resources provided by agriculture and livestock were the basis of the economy and land was the center of social relations, being the distribution of their surpluses that allowed the urban revolution that was lived between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, summit of the period called medieval optimum, benefited by a particularly mild climate. The average annual growth rate of the European population during the period 1000-1300 was 0.2%. Among the causes of the reduction in the mortality rate that allowed that growth, slight but sustained, it has been suggested the improvement in the food product of the incorporation of the eighth amino acid, thanks to the consumption of the lentil.4
The agricultural expansion of arable land was made at the expense of reducing the area of the forest and the incorporation of marginal lands and although it contributed to the growth of food production, it inevitably led to the negative consequences of the law of diminishing returns , what was among the distant causes or preconditions of the crisis of the fourteenth century. Despite the progress, medieval agriculture always showed signs of precariousness due to the impossibility of making the productive investment of the surplus (extracted in the form of feudal rent by the nobility and the clergy) and its close dependence on natural conditions.