Coke has been described as "the real hero of Norfolk agriculture", despite the fact that his land was so poor one critic is said to have remarked that "the thin sandy soil must be ploughed by rabbits yoked to a pocket knife". However, academics and writers dispute his importance. 19th and early 20th century historians held him to be the crucial figure of the British Agricultural Revolution, crediting him with inventing four-crop rotation. Naomi Riches describes this as an "error", and R. A. C. Parker, writing in the "Economic History Review", states that "many of the innovations he is supposed to have introduced should be attributed to his predecessors in Norfolk"; however that "is not to deny the substantial contribution of Coke himself to the advance of farming technique in England".