AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION IN ENGLAND.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1908, 6 April 1880, Page 4

AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION IN ENGLAND.

At the ordinary general meeting of the Institution of Surveyors, held at their rooms, George street, "Westminster, Mr W. J. Dradel, vice-president, in the chair, a paper was read by Mr W. L. Huakisaon, “On the Present Depression in English Agriculture ; its Real and Assumed Causes.” The assumed causes of the/ansatisfaotory state of English farming, the lecturer said, might bo divided into real and false causes. Among the real causes which had more or loss contributed to the depression were the seasons, prices, increased cost of labour, increased rates, and American competition. Dealing with these in the order named he showed, by reference to tables, that the yield of wheat and barley was in a wet cycle much less than in a dry one. On a farm in the Kemper division of the red sandstone formation in Notts, in a parish a few miles from where the rainfall was registered, the yield of wheat and barley from 1868 to 1871, with an annual average rainfall of 24.4 inches, was 3.85 quarters to the acre, the value of which was £lO 7s 3d ; while from 1875 to 1878, with a rainfall of 29.6, the average yield was 2.61 quarters, the value of which was £6 7f 6i. In 1879 the rainfall was still greater, and the yield less in proportion. On a farm of 700 acres, comprising 200 acres of grass and 500 acres of arable land there would bo a loss of £365 per annum, which for five years in succession was a loss of £3175, or the whole of the farmer’s capital. As to prices the Parliamentary return showed that up to the end of 1878 the only articles of agricultural produce which had seriously fallen in price were wheat and cheese ; and that with regard to beasts and sheep the average prices for the last few years had been as much as in preceding years, and though there had been a decline in 1879, there was no reason to suppose that it was more than temporary. The increased cost of labor ho considered was compensated for by the economy resulting from the use of machines. The rates had increased, but in the bulk of the rural parches not to the extent that was sometimes imagined. American competition was no doubt a serious matter, and they must adopt their farming to it, but he did not think it would prove utterly ruinous, and it was a matter on which they must suspend their judgment and wait for further information. Mr Huakisson then proceeded to discuss what he termed the false causes assigned for the depression of agriculture, amongst which he enumerated the absence of peasant proprietors, difficulties in the transfer of land, primogeniture, entail, the law of distress, restrictive covenants, the absence of leases, and the extravagance of farmers, all of which he maintained were irrelevant to the point at issue. They had existed during the good times as well as during the bad, and were therefore not the cause of their diffieuHes.