The English Open Field System is im- portant for economic history both in its own right and because the Open Field System set the stage for the subsequent Enclosure movement. One of the interesting debates about the Open Field System is over why with few exceptions each farmer held many small, widely separated, plots rather than one consolidated plot. Donald McCloskey (1976) argues that the scattering of plots was insurance against crop failures, the idea being that if one plot did badly but another one did well, the farmer would still have enough to survive from all of his plots put together. In terms of port- folio theory, the risk to each farmer as mea- folio theory, the risk to each farmer as mea- sured by the variance of his total output could be reduced by diversifying his hold- ings among many small plots that each faced different weather,' weed, water, and soil con- ditions. The main objection to McCloskey's char- acterization of scattering as insurance was raised by Stefano Fenoaltea (1976). He pointed out that given the costliness of hav- ing scattered plots in terms of travel time and the extra boundaries, other, cheaper modes of insurance should have been possi- ble.2 Although there is little evidence of for- mal insurance markets for crops during this period, either self-insurance through saving in good times or various informal (that is, " nonmarket") modes of insurance could have been used.