216 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
ewt.), £436,000 or £3 15s. for every acre grown ; rating reliefs (at 135. in 
the pound on agricultural land and buildings), £650,000 ; the sugar-beet 
subsidy brought into the county some £1,617,000 of which, dare I say, 
utilising my previous basis of {£7 per acre, £666,000, therefore, reached the 
producer? The meat subsidy, together with the grants directed towards 
education, small-holdings, afforestation, and so forth, must have amounted 
to at least £200,000, or 4s. per acre. We arrive, then, at a total of 
£1,952,000 or, say, £2 for every acre in agricultural utilisation. From 
this must be deducted £596,000, or 12s. per acre, as a result of the in- 
creased rates of remuneration ordained by the Wages Board, leaving a 
nett gain of {1 8s. It is a curious coincidence that sugar-beet benefits 
and wage increments should so nearly cancel one another out, for it has 
been repeatedly claimed by East Anglian farmers that the former were 
entirely absorbed by the imposed higher cost of labour. 
When it is borne in mind that the over-all per-acre value of our soil 
products is barely £8, and that it may cost £7 Ios. to raise an acre of wheat, 
£4 Ios. in the case of seeds hay, and £30 in that of potatoes, the advantages 
derived are, if not striking, at least appreciable. Statistically, the resultant 
changes in Norfolk agriculture are not unexpected. Wheat is now back 
to its pre-war acreage, while (regulated) potatoes and the fruit areas have 
increased ; the other, and unsubsidised, cereals have declined, while 
sugar-beet has largely supplanted turnips and mangolds. Milch cattle 
are now more than 50 per cent. above their pre-war numbers, the sheep 
population is only two-thirds of what it was, but pigs, beneficiaries under 
the new régime, have practically doubled. The arable land has not been 
reduced disproportionately to the national loss attributable to the demands 
of a more mobile and discriminating urban population. It is probable 
that increased mechanisation, as much as financially dictated staff reduc- 
tions, has been responsible for the withdrawal of some two thousand 
whole-time male employees during these fourteen post-war years. 
Norfolk may, indeed, be taken as illustrative of the recent post-war 
tendencies exhibited by the country as a whole, and frequently unappre- 
ciated by the man in the (urban) street. They are as follows: a slight 
increase in the physical output of the soil, a decline in arable area, which 
would undoubtedly have been much larger but for the grants-in-aid 
directed to specific crops; a marked transference from the production of 
feeding-stuffs to that of sale crops ; a reduction in the number of workers, 
accompanied by a greater output per person employed ; and a redistribu- 
tion between the different classes of livestock, which still account for 
three-quarters of the total agricultural output expressed in terms of 
money. Nationally, there has occurred a very marked augmentation in 
the consumption of Imperial as opposed to non-Imperial supplies, 
together with an increase in the per caput consumption of the more 
expensive foods, 
Of the expenditure which has brought about these results, land-owners, 
have, directly, received little, and their position has, owing to permanently 
enhanced costs of maintenance and repairs, continued to deteriorate. 
Tenant-farmers have, by it, been enabled partly to bridge the gap that 
would otherwise have rendered them impotent to function as producers. 
