Market Conditions and Production 85 



As to vegetable growing there is still less statistical information, 

 though some of the figures already quoted include vegetable gardens. 

 Potatoes covered almost 100,000 acres more in 1909 than they had 

 done from I876-I88O 1 . Forcing developed rapidly in this sphere 

 also, especially in the growing of tomatoes and cucumbers under 

 glass 2 . Market gardening was in fact being extended in almost all 

 parts of the country, but especially in Kent, and next in Wor- 

 cestershire and Cambridgeshire 3 . Whole districts were devoted to 

 it. Nor were these districts only in the neighbourhood of great 

 markets : in some of them the means of communication did not at all 

 seem to favour the development. Thus the Isle of Axholme, in 

 Lincolnshire, which lay almost outside the railway network, was 

 particularly successful with potatoes and celery. Some of the dis- 

 tricts had been even quite recently regarded as unfit for any such 

 purpose. Essex, for example, though so close to London, had 

 hitherto been devoted almost exclusively to corn. Now the corn- 

 fields, or fields which had actually been left uncultivated in consequence 

 of the falling price of corn, were turned into market gardens, and their 

 produce brought excellent prices in the easily-reached markets of 

 London and its suburbs 4 . The high rents paid for garden lands 

 prove how profitable this branch of agriculture has become 5 . While 

 corn lands now hardly ever bring over 2 an acre, and more often 

 only 15^-. to 2$s., 2 is a very low rent for land devoted to 

 horticulture. I visited market gardens in the neighbourhood of 

 Coventry paying as much as 5 to 10 an acre. Nor is this the 

 maximum. Some orchards in the Vale of Evesham and its neigh- 

 bourhood pay ;i8 6 : while in Hampshire, where 30,000 acres are 

 now devoted to strawberry growing, the land is often worth 200 an 

 acre for this purpose, whereas for arable farming it had brought in 

 only lOs. to 1 per annum 7 . 



1 Agricultural Statistics, 1909, p. 23. 



2 Bear, op. cit. pp. 267-9 : " No other industry connected with land has shown such 

 great expansion in this country during the last thirty years, and especially the last twenty, as 

 the cultivation of fruit and flowers under glass for market." Then follow reports as to the 

 progress of this industry in various districts. 



3 Graham, op. cit. pp. 10, 142 ff. 



4 Cp. Mr Graham's Morning Post article : " Many acres (in Essex) which formerly were 

 derelict have now been taken up and turned into market gardens." 



5 Examples of this at the worst period of the crisis are to be found in the Report of 1894, 

 qu. 12,667 : also 5540> 5756. 



6 Final Report, p. 254. 



7 J. C. Newsham, Strawberry Growing in Hampshire, in Journal of the Board of 

 Agriculture, June 1909, p. 186. 



