454 The Decline in Sheep Breeding. [Aug., 



Comparison of Decline in Grass and Arable Districts-— 



Whatever may be the causes of the serious reduction in the 

 number of sheep which we are considering, it is clear that their 

 •effects have been much more marked in some districts than in 

 others. Speaking generally, the arable counties have lost most 

 heavily. Without going into details for each county it will 

 suffice to compare the returns for two groups of half a dozen 

 representative arable and grass counties. For the arable group 

 let us take Cambridge, Essex, Lincoln, Norfolk, Suffolk, and the 

 East Eiding, in each of which the proportion of arable is between 

 two-thirds and four-fifths of the farmed land. For the grass 

 group let us take Hereford, Leicester, Northumberland, 

 Somerset, Stafford and Warwick, in each of which the proportion 

 of arable is one-third or less. So as to get a broad view let us 

 take the year 1912, when the total number of sheep in the 

 country was just over 25,000,000 and the breeding ewes 

 10,120,000. This represents a fair basis, rather on the low side, 

 for what may be termed the normal stock of the country. In 

 that year the two groups of counties I have chosen had each 

 about 2 J million sheep. In 1919 the sheep in the arable 

 counties had been reduced by 28 per cent., and in the grass 

 counties by 13 per cent., while the arable land in the former 

 group had been increased by 3 per cent, and in the latter group 

 by 16 per cent. The Down " counties, Dorset, Hampshire 

 and Wiltshire, which would not fall expressly into either group,- 

 but form a typical sheep-breeding district, show in the same 

 period a reduction of no less than 37 per cent, in their total 

 sheep stock, the increase of arable land being 4 per cent. 



On a superficial view of these figures it might be argued that 

 an extension of the arable area involves a reduction in the 

 number of sheep. That this would be a fallacy needs no argu- 

 ment from me before an assembly such as this. Not only is 

 arable land necessary for the intensive production of mutton and 

 Iamb, but conversely, the keeping of sheep is, under normal 

 conditions in this country, the most effective and economical 

 means of keeping many classes of land under the plough and of 

 maintaining and extending the area under cereal crops. If this 

 fact appears to have been disproved by the fact that sheep 

 declined while arable land increased, the explanation is to be 

 found mainly in the incidents of control. While the cost of 

 production increased on arable land to a much greater extent 

 than on grass land, the arable sheep farmer was prevented from 

 •obtaining the higher prices for the lamb and mutton he produced 



