138 Agriculture 



must therefore have increased very markedly during the period, partly as 

 a result of increased mechanisation (particularly tractors), partly as a result 

 of the alterations in the types of commodities produced, and partly also, 

 owing to greater skill in the supervision of labour. 



These changes have undoubtedly been most pronounced since the war, 

 particularly after 1930, when legislation prevented agricultural wages 

 from falling proportionately with the drop in commodity prices. Faced 

 with the problem of wage rates fixed at roughly double their pre-war level, 

 farmers were forced to devise means of increasing the output per worker.^ 

 Broadly speaking, the years 1920-36 probably constitute a period of un- 

 precedented rate of change both in the internal and external organisation 

 of farming in the County. 



(B) GENERAL SURVEY 



By J. A. McMillan, b.sc. 



Organiser of Agricultural Education, Cambridgeshire 

 County Council 



Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely are now separate administrative units. 

 When it will be convenient to refer specifically to one or the other, the 

 Administrative County of Cambridge wiU be termed "the County", 

 as opposed to "the Isle of Ely". Taken together, they have an area of 

 553>555 acres. Of tliis, in the year 1937, some 466,600 acres were "imder 

 crops and grass" and 12,671 acres were "rough grazings". There are 3 J 

 acres of arable land to every acre of grassland, a concentration only 

 exceeded in England by the Holland Division of Lincolnshire, where the 

 proportion is four to one. A markedly rural character is reflected also in 

 the population figures. The total population in 193 1 was 217,702, a density 

 of 260 per square mile, which compares with a density of 690 per square 

 mile for England and Wales as a whole. Of the total employed persons over 

 fourteen years of age, 28 per cent were engaged in agricultural occupations, 

 compared with 6 per cent for England and Wales. 



MAIN CROPS 



"Holdings of i acre and upwards" returned in 1937 numbered 7257; 

 and three-quarters of these fall in the group class from one to fifty acres; 

 while there are many holdings of less than one acre, which are not included 



' R. McG. Carslaw, "The Changing Organisation of Arable Farms", Econ. Jour. 

 xlvii, 483 (1937). On a group of 150 farms, the physical output per worker in- 

 creased by some 27 per cent between 193 1 and 1936. 



