CHAPTER IX 

 MARKET-GARDENING. 



To give a really adequate idea of the extent to which 

 market-gardening is followed in the United Kingdom is 

 practically impossible. As already indicated, the returns 

 of * agricultural holdings ' take no notice of any that 

 are under one acre in size.* And the sum total of hold- 

 ings and diminutive market-gardens which are under 

 that limit, yet, nevertheless, contribute substantially 

 in the aggregate to the supplies put on the market, 

 must be very considerable. But even the most com- 

 plete of returns as to acreage, showing increase in one 

 period compared with another, would still be inadequate, 

 inasmuch as, although in certain districts the actual 

 area under market-gardens may not have increased, 

 the quantities produced, under the system of intensive 

 culture and especially with the expansion of glass- 

 houses will be very considerably greater, on the same 

 amount of land, contrasted with the conditions of ten 

 or twenty years ago. 



If, again, one tries to get statistics as to production, 

 a fresh set of difficulties present themselves. In the 

 first place, the largest of market-gardeners do not care 



* In effect, if 100 acres of farm-land be cut up into allotments of 

 less than one acre each, for the purposes of market-gardens, those 

 loo acres would appear in the official statistics as 'gone out of 

 cultivation.' 



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