ENGLISH FARMING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 412, 21 July 1928, Page 25

ENGLISH FARMING

STEADILY DECLINING “A GLOOMY PICTURE” The records of production during last year which have just been published by the Ministry of Agriculture make a gloomy picture of English farming, states an exchange. For 35 years the extent of land under crops or permanent pasture has been decreasing. There was a slight reaction during the war, when necessity compelled the increase of homegrown foodstuffs, but since then there has been a steady decline. The war found us with 10,950,000 acres of arable land, by 1918 we had brought 12,399,000 under the plough, but last year there were only 10,310,000. We are an English exchange. We are now now growing a good deal less corn than we were in 1914, and there is no sign °f a check in the decline of production. The number of workers on the land is inevitably diminishing, too. In the whole of England and Wales there are now only 452,535 men in regular agricultural work. Sugar Beet Disappointing The new hope of arable land, sugar peet, was in 1927 disappointing. Noth]Rg went right with the crop, and though the acreage was much increased. the amount of sugar produced an acre of beet was the low r est on record. English farming becomes and more a matter of flocks and herds. We never had so many cattle before, 6,275,240 head in all, and of these the dairy herds number 2,790,703. 'et our pastures do not produce as much beef as when they fed fewer kiue. it seems that we now eat our beef smaller and younger, and that ' ve demand a good deal more veal, sheep have attained the more than patriarchal number of 17,072,275, ail d still we do not produce as much mutton as in the years before the war. ' Ve have 2,691,514 pigs, but even of P°rk and bacon we cannot grow as

much in our own country as we did in 1914. It will be seen, therefore, that in spite of some signs of improvement we are becoming more and more dependent for our meat supplies on countries overseas. Dairy-farming Increasing The foodstuffs in which our farmers are actually increasing their production are milk and eggs and poultry. The output of milk has risen steadily and considerably, though even the Ministry of Agriculture cannot be sure how much of the increase is being made into butter and cheese, how much is drunk. Our poultry increase and multiplv. Before the war we had some 29.000,000. Now we have 39,491,000. They laid in 1913 941,000,000 eggs; last year we collected 1,679,000,000. The rather stupefying effect of these figures must not obscure the important fact that in this department, if in this alone, our own farms are supplying a larger and larger proportion of our needs.