Plow

From Almeopedia

The plow is a basic agricultural machine, used to turn the soil, exposing nutrient-rich soil and burying weeds and the remains of the last crop.

The earliest farmers used nothing more than a digging stick. Once cattle were domesticated, it was possible to drag the stick through the ground; the framework for holding the stick and attaching it to the ox was the first plow proper, invented by the Wede:i around -1200; their word for the invention was źa:u. Once the wheel was developed, wheels were added to the plow for balance.

The Mei and the Lenani-Littoral peoples quickly adopted the plow. Proto-Eastern has no common word for plow, suggesting that the early Eastern peoples had not advanced beyond garden agriculture. By about -500 the plow had spread to the Meťaiun and to Munkhâsh.

The Cuzeians increased their agricultural efficiency by farming grain in common; this allowed enormous fields with no boundaries and few turns. By 100 they had also improved the plow by adding an iron cutting blade. These developments allowed a high population density, but also contributed to overfarming and deforestation, and indirectly to the fall of Cuzei and the decline of the Eärdur valley in general.

Around 800, the Jeori developed the moldboard plow, which essentially cuts a slice of soil and turns it over. This was not only faster, but better suited to the heavy soils of Xengiman. The increased population density contributed to the rise of Jeor and then Axunai. There was less need for the heavy plow in the drier soils of Eretald, which kept to the old methods for more than a milennium.

An agricultural revolution began in Eretald in the 2800s, fostered by the adoption of four inventions, only one of which was recent and local:

• The switch from the two-field to the three-field system
• The spread of water mills
• The adoption of the horse collar, invented by the Coruo barbarians, which increased the amount horses could comfortably pull by tenfold and allowed the faster horse to be used for plowing
• The introduction of the heavy plow

Before these improvements, a measure of seed yielded only a 50% surplus; farmers lived precariously (even without the threat of pillaging barbarians) and were easily devastated by drought or plague. Now the surplus was 300% or more. Farmers became more secure and more numerous-- a factor in their increasing success against the nomads. Increased agricultural productivity allowed for larger towns and cities as well, leading to the later mercantile and industrial revolutions.

The present duke of Vyat, Aďdul 4e, has experimented with plows pulled by a wheeled steam engine, using the efficient Veṫeu-Suvoney engines which have been available since 3466. Vyat's engine is slow, cumbersome and probably a net waste of energy, but has attracted much attention as the harbinger of mechanized agriculture.