uses.

These figures show that nearly 3 million acres of land which were under corn in the years 1871-75 have now been put to other This represents a loss of 36 per cent. of the area under cereals, while in the case of the non-cereal crops the loss is about 700,000 acres, or less than 20 per cent. of the area under these crops.

The heaviest loss among corn crops has been in the wheat acreage, which in the fifty years from 1871-75 to 1921-25, declined by over 1,650,000 acres, or nearly 50 per cent. Barley declined by three-quarters of a million acres, or 36 per cent., in the same period, and "other corn" (rye, beans and peas) by over 300,000 acres, this decrease amounting to about 35 per cent. On the other hand the acreage of oats increased by 375,000 acres, or 23 per cent. The heavy reduction in the wheat acreage compared with other cereals reflects the heavier fall in the price of this crop, while the increase in the acreage under oats may be due to their substitution for other corn crops as the bulk of this crop is utilised for feeding to stock on farms, and its selling value is not the chief consideration.

The outstanding feature in the figures showing acreage of crops other than corn is the substantial fall in the acreage of turnips and swedes, the decline having continued unchecked from 1871. There have been more or less steady additions to the potato acreage and the area under mangolds has also been extended, while less land is returned as bare fallow. The apparent increase in "miscellaneous crops" in the last five years is due to a re-classification of orchards, which are now included under this heading.

Taking the total area devoted to corn and other crops (omitting clover and rotation grasses), that is to say, the land actually under the plough in any one year, the distribution of crops within that area shows some features of interest.

x 28832

On every

B 3

100 acres of tilled land the area occupied by the different crops is shown below:

It will be seen that although wheat and barley are less cultivated, their place has largely been taken by oats, so that about two-thirds of the land that is not in grass of one sort or another is still devoted to corn.

20

1905

1896-1905

CHAPTER III. THE PRODUCTION OF CROPS.

1. The average yield per acre.-Various factors may individually or collectively account for changes in the average yield per acre of the different crops from one year to another. The most important is undoubtedly the weather from the time the land is being prepared for sowing to the completion of the harvest, but over extended periods there may also be changes in the standard of cultivation, in the class of seed used, and in the average fertility of the land on which the crop is grown. Account must also be taken of the fact that good and bad years from the point of view of weather are unevenly distributed, so that any one short period (e.g., ten years) may contain more favourable or unfavourable years than another. It would, however, be of considerable interest if any definite improvement in output could be shown to have occurred, apart from the fortuitous influence of favourable and unfavourable seasons. To test the question to some extent diagrams have been prepared, showing for each of the three principal cereals the average yield per acre in England and Wales from 1885 to 1925 (the forty years for which figures of yield are available) together with ten-year averages, and also ten-year averages of the area under each crop (see Diagrams I and II).

The ten-year average yield per acre of wheat showed fairly steady progress for the first 20 years, and it is perhaps significant that during the greater part of this time the wheat acreage was declining rapidly. Presumably the land on which the crop continued to be grown would be the land which could be most profitably maintained under wheat, and would in many cases be the land which gave the best yield. This may account to some extent for the increasing yield per acre but it has to be remembered that much of the land which has gone out of cultivation under wheat is heavy land which gives a good yield but is very expensive to work. It seems probable that the weather was on the whole more favourable for agricultural production during these years. Subsequently, there was a marked decline followed by an upward turn.

In the case of barley, the diagram indicates a fluctuating movement in the first 20-30 years without any well-marked tendency, followed by a definite decline. In this case there has been a reduction in area throughout. The ten-year average yield per acre of oats rose between 1885-94 and 1902-11, but as in the case of the other two corn crops this was followed by a decline. At the same time the acreage increased. On the whole, there is some general resemblance in these curves, and the fall in the average yield in all three cases towards the close of the period suggests that there is a common cause, which is presumably a greater proportion of unfavourable seasons.