The Great Agricultural Reform

Denmark was and is primarily an agricultural nation, and it was one of the first to adopt the new farming methods and tools that were invented in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Fields were reallotted, improved plows were used, crop rotation was introduced and new high-yield crops (potato, Indian corn) from the new world were taken into wide use. Not all of the reforms were greeted with joy by the peasants, but the most unpopular by far involved the splitting of villages into separate farms so that the peasants could live closer to their fields.