Agricultural History Review, Volume 37 Part 2 (1989), pp. 130–143

Discussion of the productivity of the medieval arable has necessarily concentrated on the margin and limits of technology. The suggestion, recently advanced, that one of the principal determinants of low arable productivity was the poor cleaning of the arable, requires further empirical research. Especially is this necessary, since recent research into arable productivity has emphasized more intensive use of, inter alia, labour resources, which resulted in higher output. Such conscious increases of the costs of production may have applied equally in the case of cleaning the arable, both through labour-intensive weeding and the potential use of the rebinatio (additional fallow-stirring). An attempt is made here to survey how far such labour inputs were employed. 

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