A brief history of agriculture in the UK

by Professor John Wibberley

Summary

It often helps to understand a situation better if we know how it came about. This very brief history helps to explain the current state of farming. Not only does it tell the story but it makes important points about, what for many, is farmers’ strange connection to the land. For farmers it is much more than just a production resource.

Introduction

The term ‘agriculture’ is of seventeenth-century origin (Latin agricultura) a derivation which combines ager (land, field) with cultura (culture). The word ‘culture’ itself is interesting, deriving from cultus (cultivation) and colere (to till, to cultivate, to ‘worship’ - as in ‘cult’). Thus the word ‘agriculture’ includes ideas of physical land, land as a total context for human activity, and land as spiritually significant. However the word has come to be more narrowly understood by most to mean simply the techniques of physical land cultivation to raise crops and livestock.

In some nations, agriculture means ‘crop cultivation’ and livestock production is seen as a separate enterprise. In England, ‘agriculture’ means both crops and livestock but its crops are differentiated. Horticulture is cropping of vegetables and fruits on a smaller scale or as flowers and ornamental plants. Forestry is growing trees for timber and other products. In the tropics generally such distinctions are less used and a more integrated approach to farming systems is usual.

Agricultural origins

Archaeological evidence points to the so-called ‘Fertile Crescent’ zone of the Middle East (running from modern- day Iraq to Egypt) as the area of first domestication of wild grasses as cereals (notably wheat and barley) between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

The classical tradition in agriculture is represented by various characters who show their appreciation of the technical, economic and philosophical aspects of the subject. Theophrastus (287 BC) wrote ‘The earth may seem cold, but if it is inverted, it becomes free, light and clear of weeds, so it can most easily afford nourishment’. Cicero (104-43 BC) averred ‘of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man’ (De Officiis 1.51) while Horace (65-8 BC) observed, ‘Happy the man who, far from schemes of business, like the early generations of mankind, ploughs and ploughs again his ancestral land with oxen of his own breeding, with no yoke of usury about his neck!’ Virgil (70-19 BC) in his ‘Georgics’ appears to address issues of husbandry (bees, trees, cattle and crops) but he does so in conjunction with both political and spiritual aspirations.

British agriculture

In Britain, early prehistoric agriculture has marked the landscape of Wiltshire around Stonehenge, Avebury and Silbury Hill. The Romans established a three-year rotation of winter wheat, spring barley and fallow, while the Danes and Saxons pursued strip farming. The monastic traditions - especially the ‘garden cultivation’ approach of St Benedict’s followers (from around 540AD) saw earth as common heritage to be nurtured rather than economic utility to be exploited, bought and sold. The Franciscans went so far as to maintain ‘that private property itself was against the law of Christ’.

The Domesday survey was instigated in the Chapter House of Gloucester Cathedral by William the Conqueror and provided the first national rural audit. The hierarchical manorial system developed with the Lord of the Manor with his serfs (bondfolk to the land) and freemen. Freemen were categorised according to their landholding - larger ones being yeomen, villeins having some 30 acres and cotters (‘cottagers’) with around 5 acres (2 hectares). Injustice became all too common with such practices as the landlord claiming all winter manures to boost his land’s fertility.

The wool trade developed during the Plantagenet times of the 13th and 14th centuries and derived such prosperity that many fine church buildings date from that period. The Luttrell Psalter of 1340 celebrated the apparent connection between cultivation and worship. However, labour problems intensified owing to wage controls from the mid 14th century culminating in the ‘Peasants’ Revolt’ of 1381. This led to a clear demarcation of landlords, tenants and labourers during the 15th century.

During the 16th century, sheep enclosures were made especially in the south Midlands and ‘book’ farmers emerged who wrote about their farming ideas and philosophies. The seventeenth century saw the beginnings of the agricultural revolution with Jethro Tull’s corn drill which sowed in rows developed on his farm at Crowmarsh Gifford in Oxfordshire while Viscount Townshend established a four-course rotation of different crops on his Raynham, Norfolk light land to intensify production The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth saw the agricultural revolution gain pace, with livestock improvement a key focus as well as land and crop improvement. Land enclosure occurred in earnest, markedly altering the English landscape and rural/urban relations.

Agricultural Societies had been set up from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 20th centuries to promote ‘agricultural progress’. Agricultural education in English was established at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester from 1845 and others were to follow, notably in Guelph, Ontario from 1874 and Lincoln, New Zealand from 1878. Ironically, a tax on exported whisky funded the starting of agriculture as a university subject in many UK universities from the 1890s, including Reading. Agricultural science greatly expanded from the mid-nineteenth century, with the notable establishment of Rothamsted Experimental Station in Hertfordshire in 1841 instigating long-term field trials on manuring which are still going on. Land drainage, the use of seeds mixtures and livestock improvements proceeded in parallel.

1837-1874 is generally known as the ‘Golden Age of English Farming’ but whereas wheat fetched £8.80 per ton in 1875 it had plummetted to £3.80 by 1894. The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 (admitting cheaper foreign imports from the expanding British Empire) was largely responsible for this, leading to a fall in grain acreage in Britain from 9.5 million acres in 1870 to only 7.3 million acres by 1900, coupled with a drift from the land and a consequent impetus for mechanisation. Meanwhile the development of refrigeration by the 1890s had allowed entry of meat and fruit imports from as far away as New Zealand. Only milk, eggs and specialist market gardening expanded at this time since these enterprises did not yet suffer from import competition.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, half Britain’s food was imported. During the war the area planted to staple crops of wheat, oats and potatoes was rapidly expanded owing to the risks to merchant ships carrying imports. In 1925, sugar beet subsidies were introduced to encourage greater home production in view of the physical and financial vulnerability of excessive reliance on imports.

In the 1930s, with continuing pressure from preferential imports from the Empire - such as meat from New Zealand, canned produce from Australia - Marketing Boards were set up, for milk, for potatoes and for sugar beet. The period saw widespread economic depression which affected farming and led to countryside dereliction and reversion to unkempt scrubland. In 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, Britain had 5% of its workforce engaged in agriculture but again there was a drive to plough up grassland for potatoes and wheat cultivation. Civilian help was mobilised, including ‘land girls’, with the coordination of efforts through County War Agricultural Executive Committees.

After World War II, the 1947 Agriculture Act underpinned policy thinking and practice. This policy has been to underwrite price guarantees and income support by means of subsidies with encouragement to expand output by intensification and mechanisation. Successive governments - both in the UK and other countries - have pursued cheap food policies. However, there has been a growing differential between the richest and the poorest countries alongside an increasing interaction between national economies and the global economy.

Between 1960 and 1970, agricultural manpower fell by 25% while output increased by 40%. Typically, change has been dramatic; for instance, on Reading University’s Churn Estates on the Berkshire Downs there was one person employed per 31ha of arable crops in 1950 and one per 210 ha in 1993. In 1971, the UK began its two-year transition to European Community (now EU) membership which led to something of a bonanza decade for those growing supported commodities such as wheat and barley. Products outside the support mechanisms such as pigs continued to experience cyclical booms and declines. The philosophy was for EU producers to earn income from a carefully rigged market. Non EU importers paid a levy for the privilege of selling within it which was set to ensure they could not undercut EU prices. Also EU exporters were ensured a similar return to fellow farmers selling within the EU by means of export subsidies.

By the 1980s, it became clear that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was in disarray and going bankrupt - accounting for over half the total EU expenditure. This was because the application of technology was inexorably increasing yields (eg. of cereals by 2.5% per annum) and surpluses were building up leading to less need for imports (thus lower payments into the Common Agricultural Fund in import levies) and more need to export (and thus claim export subsidies).

Surpluses were building up in other sectors too; milk quotas were introduced in 1984 and farmers given a ‘licence to produce’. This became a tradable asset and some sold or leased their quota to others farmers accelerating the trend towards fewer, larger herds which continues to this day. In 1988, the EU announced the ‘decoupling’ of production support from that for various environmental protection and enhancement schemes; the latter would be supported while the former would be phased out. Efforts to limit overproduction were also introduced from the late 1980s with arable land having to be ‘set-aside’ and no crops grown on it.

Only 1.2% of the UK working population is now engaged in agriculture and up to farm gate it contributes less than 1% of Gross Domestic Product making it politically negligible though as the base of a much larger food processing and retailing sector it has a far bigger impact. For example, agriculture and its ancillary trades contributes some 14% to the rural economy of the SW region of England. Farming is still environmentally crucial as it is responsible for some 80% of the UK landscape and there is growing environmental awareness among the public. There is also increased concern about animal welfare and food safety and diminishing incomes and declining morale among farmers. (At £5200 average net income per farmer in 2000 was less than 25% of that 25 years ago in real terms).

Farming livelihoods and genuine sustainability are hugely threatened worldwide by the current WTO policy of ‘non-discrimination against imports’. This is coupled in the UK with the government view that ‘national food security is neither necessary nor desirable’. We urgently need a ‘Highway Code’ for international trade coupled with an awakening of consumer common-sense plus farmer collaboration.