The period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries was one of rising population and increasing pressure on land and resources. Access to land per person and per household declined as peasant arable holdings were fragmented to make room for this growing population, and an increasing proportion of the population was left reliant on smallholdings from which to earn a living. How so many people were able to live off of so little land is a crucial problem in our understanding of the high and late medieval economy. Through examination of illuminated manuscripts, religious iconography, archaeological findings and written records, we identify a series of agricultural techniques, well suited to the growing number smallholding peasants, and argue that peasants were able to achieve high levels of land productivity through the labour-intensive use of small-scale technologies.