During the long sixteenth century, discrepant trends marked European agriculture. Though data are not available for all areas, recent studies indicate that more intensive use of land and labor as farmers experimented with crops and methods boosted both productivity per hectare and overall output from the early 1400s to the later 1500s, yet agricultural labor productivity dropped by up to a third. In the decades before 1600, however, the coastal provinces of the nascent Dutch Republic were something of an exception in terms of productivity and innovation, and parts of England showed signs of upturn as well.