This increased productivity eventually brought down prices, and this encouraged further innovation in order to increase yield to make up for the drop in prices. Lower food prices had an added benefit. Since food cost less and wages in England remained high, workers would have more disposable income, which meant that if there were consumer goods available, they would be consumed, which incentivized people to make consumer goods more efficiently, and therefore more cheaply. You can see how this positive feedback loop leads to more food and more stuff, culminating in a world where people have so much stuff that we must rent space to store it, and so much food that obesity has become a bigger killer than starvation. Thanks, Thought Bubble. So this increased productivity also meant that fewer people needed to work in agriculture in order to feed the population. To put this in perspective, in 1520, 80% of the English population worked the land.