An Index of Regional Change in English Farming

Abstract

GEOGRAPHERS HAVE used a number of cartographical and statistical methods to demonstrate regional variations in agriculture, for the most part based on crop and livestock figures. In this paper it is suggested that a useful supplementary criterion in the study of agricultural geography is rent per acre. Where figures for the appropriate administrative units are available, maps can be constructed to show both rent per acre for representative years and the percentage changes in rent between any two selected years. Why should rent per acre be of significance in the regional study of agriculture? First, because it introduces the idea of value, which land-use statistics cannot do. This is of particular importance when changes in agriculture are studied over any considerable number of years. Whilst contract rent is both a production cost for the tenant farmer and gross income for the landlord, it is nevertheless generally agreed to be a reliable guide to long-term changes in the prosperity of the agricultural industry as a whole. Thus in the last one hundred and fifty years the level of rents and agricultural prices have moved in approximate harmony. During the Napoleonic Wars rents and prices boomed; in the thirty-five years after the end of the wars both rents and prices were at a lower level, and the years between I815 and 1852 were less prosperous. From the Crimean War until the late I870s prices were more stable and rents rose sharply; English agriculture experienced a brief 'golden age', which, however, was ended by the catastrophic fall in grain prices in the I88os and I89os. There was a slow recovery after 1895, and then a short-lived affluence as prices rose during and immediately after the First World War. But after 1920 the general trend of agricultural prices was again downward and farming suffered in the I920s and early I930s, only recovering properly during the Second World War. Since 1947 prices and wages have risen proportionally more than rents and the prosperity of landlords has perhaps been less pronounced than that of their tenants.1 This general trend is well known; what is of significance is that if changes in rent are studied regionally, it soon becomes apparent that the impact of both depression and prosperity has been spatially uneven. Secondly, rent per acre is a valuable index of regional differences in agriculture in any one year. The factors which determine the rent per acre of a parish or a county can be grouped into two broad categories: those which do not and those which do vary regionally in a systematic manner. In the first category can be placed such factors as the length of lease, the amount and quality of the fixed equipment, landlord policy, price of farm products and the demand for vacant farms. In the second class are factors such as soil fertility, the type of farming, the location in relation to markets, and the predominant size of holding. This latter group of factors are the most important determinants of rent per acre when areas as large as a parishand more especially a county-are being considered.2 The significance of these factors in