Full text: The agricultural output of England and Wales 1925

CHAPTER II.-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 
1 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 médny 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 cultiva- 
tion 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 hag 
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 cage 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 
I 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,
	        
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