M.— AGRICULTURE 



243 



Table VII. — continued. 

 Increases — continued . 



Arable Sheep Farming as developed in the south of England well deserves 

 special notice, because it is the one British system in which sheep are 

 managed really intensively. The flock is folded on forage and root crops 

 practically all the year round. The relatively high productivity of arable 

 land and the systematic management of the fold enable large numbers to 

 be kept on a given area of land. The sheep secure their food with the 

 minimum of exertion on their part ; they usually receive generous supplies 

 of cake or concentrated food, and the land is well and evenly manured 

 for succeeding crops of corn. Table VII shows how this system of 

 farming has suffered. In the fourteen English counties in the first 

 column the number of sheep was 5,040,000 in 1900 and is now only 

 2,393,000. The reduction in arable flocks must be even greater than 

 the figures indicate, because in practically all counties there has been 

 some increase in grass sheep. With present costs of labour and prices of 

 produce, it is no longer profitable to transfer labour and exertion from the 

 sheep to the shepherd, and it is becoming more difficult to obtain men to 

 ' wait on the sheep,' if I may use a Yorkshire expression. Even more 

 important is the fact that the manurial residues left by the sheep fold 

 can only be valued at a very low figure, whether one takes the cost of 

 purchasing corresponding amounts of manurial ingredients or the direct 

 return received in the form of corn. Until last year prices of mutton 

 were fairly well maintained, but the disastrously low prices for corn cut 

 away the foundation on which the whole system was based. 



The system has been most highly developed on poor thin chalk soils, 

 and it is often maintained that such soils can only be kept in cultivation 



