Actually the state of farming was in flux. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolutio... for some of what was happening.

Of particular importance was a combination of increased productivity and decreased labor requirements. Yes, this happened before mechanization thanks to factors such as larger fields from enclosures combined with better plows. The result of the enclosures in particular was a wave of poor people migrating to the cities. Those became the desperate poor who provided a workforce for the Industrial Revolution.