< 
The actual variation from year to year in the average yields 
per acre of wheat, barley and oats though appreciable is not 
extreme, that is to say, the difference between a good yield and 
a poor yield on the average of the country is only a question as a 
rule of 3 or 4 cwt.* If is much wider in the case of some other 
crops. In the following table are shown the highest and lowest 
yields so far recorded for all the main crops together with the 
highest expressed as a percentage of the lowest. 
HicresT AND LowEST AVERAGE YIELDS PER ACRE OF 
CERTAIN CROPS. 
TOD. 
PE 
Wheat 
Barley 
Oats - 
Beans 
Peas - 
Clover hay 
Meadow hay 
Hops 
Potatoes  - - 
Turnips and swedes 
Mangolds - 
Highest 
vield. 
Cwt. 
19-8 
17-3 
16-3 
18-6 
16-2 
33-7 
29-2 
17-1 
Tons. 
71 
15-7 
21.0 
Year. 
1921 
1909 
1907 
1906 
1906 
1889 
[898 
1924 
1922 
1909 
1917 
Lowest 
vield. 
Cwt. 
14-2 
13-3 
11-6 
9-6 
9-3 
16-5 
12:0 
4-8 
Tons. 
4-8 
7-4 
12-8 
Year. 
Percentage 
highest to 
lowest. 
1893 
1893 
1922 
[917 
1922 
1893 
1893 
| S88 
Per cent. 
139 
130 
141 
194 
174 
204 
243 
356 
1912 148 
1921 | 212 
1893 173 
The wide variation in the yields of some of these crops naturally 
affects the ten-year averages considerably. When a very good 
season may yield double the crop of a poor season, the ten-year 
average is especially liable to abrupt rises or falls and a much 
more extended period than ten years would be necessary to 
gauge the tendency of any movement there may be. 
An examination of the yields per acre of each of these crops, 
apart from potatoes and hops, indicates a general resemblance 
to the corn crops. For practically all farm crops except potatoes 
the period of maximum yield was approximately the ten year 
period 1901-10, and especially the latter half of the period, in 
which it was rare to find any crop yielding in any year less than 
the average for the previous decade. For this the weather must 
have been mainly responsible as also for the falling off which 
occurred shortly before the outbreak of war. Subsequently, 
yields were probably affected by war conditions owing to the 
* It has to be remembered that this relatively small variation is the 
result of averaging the yields in all parts of the country. Individual 
parishes, for example, in the same year, may vary from 9 to 27 cwt. in the 
case of wheat, while the same parish which in a good year may be estimated 
to have an average yield of 20 cwt. may in a bad year only produce 
9 cwt. A description of the method of estimating the production of corn 
crops is given in Chapter T