Agriculture in the United Kingdom

Agriculture in the United Kingdom is an industry in gradual decline. Though it occupies much of the United Kingdom's land area, agriculture makes a small and gradually shrinking contribution to the country's economy. Despite skilled farmers, high technology, fertile soil and subsidies, which primarily come from the European Union, farm earnings are low and falling, mainly due to low prices at the farm gate. The UK now produces less than sixty percent of the food it eats. With each generation, fewer young people can afford the increasing capital cost of entry into farming and more are discouraged by low earnings. The average age of the British farm holder is now 59.

Bleak though recent decades may have been, the British farming community is resilient and adaptable. There have been moves towards organic farming in an attempt to sustain profits, and many farmers now supplement their income by diversifying activities away from pure agriculture. Now, biofuels present new opportunities for farmers against a background of rising fears about fossil fuel prices, energy security, energy sustainability, and climate change. There is increasing awareness that farmers have an important role to play as custodians of the British countryside and wildlife.

The high cost of entry into farming presents a significant barrier. Land prices in the United Kingdom are high. Local authorities recognise this and some offer smallholdings intended to allow those with skill or training but little capital to set up as tenant farmers. Nevertheless, this provision is shrinking and there is an increasing shortage of farmland to let.

The total area on agricultural holdings is about 17,500,000 hectares (43,000,000 acres), of which 6,200,000 hectares (15,000,000 acres) are croppable. About half the croppable area is devoted to cereal crops, and of the cereal crop area, over half is wheat. There are about 32 million sheep, 10 million cattle, 9.6 million poultry and 4.7 million pigs.^[1] These are arranged on almost 327,000 agricultural holdings, on which the average farmable area is around 54 hectares (130 acres) each.^[2] About 70% of farms are owner-occupied or mostly so, the remainder being tenant farmers. Farmers represent an ageing population, partly due to low earnings and barriers to entry, and there are ongoing difficulties in recruiting young people into farming.^[3] The average farm holder is now 59 years old.^[4]

British farming is intensive and highly mechanised, but the country is so heavily populated that it cannot supply its own food needs. The United Kingdom is a net importer of food, producing only 59% of the food it consumes.^[5] In 2009, it exported £13.2 billion worth of food, feed and drink, and imported £31.6 billion. The vast majority of imports and exports are with other Western European countries.^[6]

Farming is subsidised, with subsidies to farmers totalling £3.64 billion (after deduction of levies) paid in 2009.^[7] These mostly originate from the EU Common Agricultural Policy.

Total income from farming in the United Kingdom was £4.07 billion in 2009,^[8] representing about 0.6% of the British national value added in that year. This is a decline of 6.7% on 2008 and a decline of 44% since 1995.^[9] Earnings are comparatively low, at £20,955 per full-time person in 2009, which represented a fall of 8.7% from 2008 values.^[9] Agriculture employs 535,000 people, representing 1.6% of the workforce, down 31% since 1996.^[10] In terms of gross value added in 2009, 83% of the UK's agricultural income originated from England, 9% from Scotland, 4% from Northern Ireland and 3% from Wales.^[10]

Crop	Production value (2009)[11]	Rank (largest producers in Europe)[12]
Milk and dairy products	£3,100,000,000	3 (Germany 1, France 2)
Beef and veal	£2,200,000,000	4 (France 1, Germany 2)
Wheat	£1,800,000,000	3 (France 1, Germany 2)
Poultry meat	£1,600,000,000	—
Fresh vegetables	£1,100,000,000	—
Pig meat	£1,000,000,000	9 (Germany 1, Spain 2)
Mutton and lamb	£962,000,000	1 (Spain 2, France 3)
Plants and flowers	£877,000,000	—
Barley	£645,000,000	—
Potatoes	£644,000,000	—
Fresh fruit	£571,000,000	—
Eggs	£562,000,000	—
Oil seed rape	£475,000,000	—
Sugar beet	£241,000,000	—

Soil is a complex mix of mineral and organic components, produced when rock is weathered and acted on by living organisms. In the British Isles as far south as the Thames Valley, the soil has been heavily glaciated, which not only ground down the rock but redistributed the resulting matter. As a result, most British soils date from the last Ice Age and are comparatively young, but in level areas and particularly south of the Thames Valley, there are much older soils.^[13]

Rainfall in Britain exceeds the rate of evaporation. This means that in freely drained areas, soil base material is washed away, which leads to a higher concentration of organic acids in the ground. Thus many British soils are quite acidic, and a large proportion of British farm land needs repeated applications of alkalines (traditionally lime) to remain fertile.^[14] Nitrites are also soluble, and the soil has no power to hold them, so rain rapidly carries them away.^[15]

Less freely drained areas tend to become waterlogged and need to be drained. Wet land may be unable to bear a tractor's weight,^[16] and drainage makes soil lighter and more easily worked, improves crops' ability to absorb food because there is more root surface area, stimulates helpful micro-organisms and allows accumulated poisons to be carried away.^[17] In Britain field drains are traditionally open ditches, but increasingly, covered pipes have been used in more modern times.^[18]

As crops grow, they absorb nutrients from the soil, so land fertility degrades over time. However, if organic matter poor in nitrogen but rich in carbohydrate is added to the soil, nitrogen is assimilated and fixed. Fertility increases while land is under grass, which helps to accumulate organic matter in the soil.^[19] These factors mean that soil is traditionally improved by means of liming, draining, and allowing to lie fallow. It is traditionally fertilised with manure, nitrogen, phosphates, and potash.

Farmyard manure is among the best all-round soil fertilisers. Urine contains about half the nitrogen and most of the potash that an animal voids, but tends to drain away, making it both the richest and the most easily lost element of manure.^[20] Dung contains the other half of the nitrogen and most of the phosphoric acid and lime. With dung, much of the nitrogen is lost in storage or locked up in slowly released forms, so greater quantities of dung are necessary compared to artificial fertilisers.^[20]

Manure is most effective when ploughed into the fields while it is still fresh, but this is not practical while crops are growing and in practice, most manure is stored and then applied in winter, or else added in ridges for the root crops.^[21]

Nitrogen stimulates plant growth, but overapplication softens the plant tissues, makes them more vulnerable to pests and disease, and reduces resistance to frost. It may be added by nitrogen-fixing crops, but many farmers prefer artificial fertilisers, which are quicker.^[22] The negative side-effects of adding nitrogen are mitigated by phosphates.

Phosphates stimulate root development in young plants and are therefore particularly valuable for root crops, though they also increase yields and speed up plant growth. Phosphates are not easily lost from soil, but they mostly occur in very stable forms that are not liberated quickly enough by natural processes, so fertilisation is necessary. Traditionally, phosphate-bearing materials added to soil include bonemeal, powdered slag, and seaweed.^[23]

Plants tend to absorb potash during early stages of growth, and potash tends to reduce the problems caused by applying nitrogen. It also increases the weight of an individual cereal grain. Traditional potash sources included applying ash to the land and ploughing in crop residues after the harvest, and artificial potash fertilisers were not used until deposits of potash salts were discovered in Germany in 1861.^[24]

In Britain the process of converting virgin land to farms has been going on for at least four thousand years. Larger-scale attempts to reclaim land have been in hand since the Stuart era, particularly between 1760 and 1860 and particularly in the Fen district.^[25]

Arable farming is the production of crops. As with all plants, crop growth is affected by light, soil, nutrients, water, air, and climate. Crops commonly grown in the United Kingdom include cereals, chiefly wheat, oats and barley; root vegetables, chiefly potatoes; pulse crops such as beans or peas; forage crops such as cabbages, vetches, rape and kale; and hay for animal feed.

Early ploughs were simply large hoes for stirring the soil, often drawn by animals. Such ploughs leave furrows suitable for distribution of seed by hand. More modern ploughs were not invented until the eighteenth century.^[26] The digging plough, introduced around 1885,^[27] leaves no detectable furrows and the land is left broken, so that a seed drill can be used for planting.

Ploughing depth in Britain varies between 5-6 inches in some limestone regions to up to 18 inches in deep stoneless silt land. Most British ploughs are made to turn a furrow of up to about a foot deep, which is relatively shallow compared to some other countries, where furrows of up to 16 inches are common.^[28]

Other machines used to prepare land include cultivators (to break up land too heavy for a normal plough), harrows (to level the surface of ploughed land), rolls or rollers (used for firming the soil), sprayers and dusters (used to spread herbicides, fungicides, insecticides and fertilisers).^[29]

Seeds may be sown in spring, summer or autumn. Spring-sown crops are vulnerable to drought in May or June. Autumn sowing is usually restricted to frost-hardy types of bean, vetch, or cereal such as winter wheat.^[30] Traditional sowing techniques include broadcasting, dibbling, drilling, and ploughing in. Drilling is normally the most economical technique where conditions are dry enough.^[31]

Historically weed control was by hand-pulling of weeds, often during "fallowing" (which means leaving the land to carry no crop for a season, during which time the weeds can be found and removed). In 1896 it was found that a copper sulphate solution would kill broad-leaved weeds without seriously damaging young cereal plants.^[32] Other chemical weedkillers were soon discovered and now common chemical weedkiller ingredients include sodium chlorate, copper chloride, sulphuric acid, dinitroorthocresol and dinitrobutylphenol. Hormone-based weedkillers are used to kill weeds more selectively. Although most weeds are vulnerable to at least one of these substances, eradicating all the weeds from a particular area of land will usually require the use of several different weedkillers.^[33]

Key[34]
Perennial weeds
Annual grass weeds
Annual broad-leaved weeds

Common name	Latin name	Crops affected
Barren brome	Anisantha sterilis	Cereals
Black bindweed	Polygonum persicaria	Broad-leaved crops
Blackgrass	Alopecurus myosuroides	Winter cereals
Bracken	Pteridium aquilinum	Upland and hill grassland
Buttercups	Ranunculus spp.	Grassland
Charlock	Sinapsis arvensis	Broad-leaved crops
Chickweed	Stellaria media	Broad-leaved crops
Cleavers	Galium aparine	Broad-leaved crops
Corn marigold	Chrysanthemum segetum	Cereals
Couch	Elytrigia repens spp.	Grassland
Docks	Rumex spp.	Grassland
Dove's-foot craneshill	Geranium molle	Broad-leaved crops
Fat hen	Chenopodium album	Broad-leaved crops
Hemp nettle	Galeopsis spp.	Broad-leaved crops
Japanese knotweed	Reynoutria japonica	Grassland
Knotgrass	Polygonum aviculare	Broad-leaved crops
Mayweeds	Matricaria spp.; Anthemis spp.	Broad-leaved crops; cereals
Mouse-eared chickweed	Cerastium fontanum	Grassland
Redshank	Polygonum persicaria	Broad-leaved crops
Rushes	Juncus spp.	Wet grassland
Speedwell	Veronica persica	Broad-leaved crops
Spurrey	Spergula arvensis	Broad-leaved crops
Thistles	Cirsium spp.	Grassland
Wild oats	Avena fatua	Spring cereals
Winter wild oats	Avena ludoviciana	Winter cereals

Pests damage crops by removing leaf area, severing roots, or simply gross damage. In the UK, they comprise invertebrates (chiefly slugs and insects or insect larvae), mammals (particularly rabbits) and birds (mainly members of the pigeon family).^[35]

A close-up photograph of an insect on a green leaf

Common name	Latin name	Crops affected[36]
Frit fly	Oscinella frit	Cereals, forage grasses
Wheat bulb fly	Delia coarctata	Cereals
Aphids	Sitobion avenae; Rhopalosiphum padi	Cereals
Cereal cyst nematode	Heterodera avenae	Cereals
Peach-potato aphid	Myzus persicae	Potatoes, sugar beet
Potato cyst nematodes	Globodera rostochiensis and G. pallida	Potatoes
Slug	Deroceras reticulatum	Brassicas
Pigeon	Columba palambus	Brassicas
Flea beetles	Phyllotreta spp.	Brassicas
Cabbage stem flea beetle	Psylliodes chrysocephala	Brassicas
Pollen beetles	Meligethes spp.	Brassicas
Cabbage caterpillars	Various spp.	Brassicas
Millipedes	Various spp.	Sugar beet
Springtails	Onychiurus spp.	Sugar beet
Symphylids	Scutigerella immaculata	Sugar beet
Beet flea beetle	Chaetocnema concinna	Sugar beet
Black bean aphid	Aphis fabae	Sugar beet, peas and beans
Beet cyst nematode	Heterodera schachtii	Sugar beet
Pea cyst nematode	Heterodera goettingiana	Peas and beans
Pea and bean weevil	Sitona lineatus	Peas and beans
Pea aphid	Acyrthosiphum pisum	Peas and beans
Pea moth	Cydia nigricana	Peas and beans
Pea midge	Contarinia pisi	Peas and beans
Bean seed fly	Delia platura	Peas and beans
Carrot fly	Psila rosea	Carrots
Willow-carrot aphid	Cavariella aegopodii	Carrots
Onion fly	Delia antiqua	Onions
Stem and bulb nematode	Ditylenchus dipsaci	Onions
Weevils	Sitona spp.	Forage grasses
Ryegrass mosaic virus	Spread by the mite Abacarus hystrix	Forage grasses
Clover stem nematode	Ditylenchus dipsaci	Clover plants

Most diseases of crop plants result from fungus spores that may live in the soil and enter through roots, be airborne and enter the plant through damaged areas or landing on leaf surfaces, or are spread by pests. These spores tend to affect photosynthesis and reduce chlorophyll, often making plants look yellow and affecting growth and marketability of the crop. They are most commonly treated with fungicides, and may be called mildews, rusts, blotches, scabs, wilts, rots or blights.^[37]

Reaping is the process of harvesting a crop. Traditionally reaping was done with the scythe and reaping hook, but in Britain these have been entirely superseded by machinery. Combine harvesters, so called because they both harvest and thresh the crop, are common. Other machines used include mowers, reapers, binders, harvesters, pea cutters and flax pullers.^[38]

Threshing is the process of removing grain from its straw and chaff. Wheat, oats, barley, beans and some kinds of small seed (e.g. clover) need to be threshed before they can be brought to market.^[39]

Pastoral farming is the breeding of livestock for meat, wool, eggs and milk, and historically (in the UK) for labour. The most common meat animals in the United Kingdom are cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry. Overwhelmingly, British wool comes from sheep, with only a few goats or alpacas bred for exotic wools such as cashmere or angora. The vast majority of milk comes from cattle, and eggs from chickens.

Most British farm animals are bred for a particular purpose, so for example, there is a sharp division between cattle bred for the beef trade—early-maturing cattle are best to increase yield,^[40] and those that store fat marbled within the muscle rather than as layers outside are preferred for the flavour^[41]—and those bred for dairy, where animals with a high milk yield are strongly preferred.

Infectious diseases present a serious risk to farmers and can wipe out a crop, herd or flock, or prevent it from being brought to market. High-profile diseases tend to be animal borne, especially those that can spread to humans. Outbreaks of these typically cause international headlines and widespread concern.^[42]

The United Kingdom suffered outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in 1967 and 2001, with a less serious outbreak in 2007. There was also an outbreak of Bluetongue in 2007.^[43] The most serious disease to affect British agriculture was BSE, a cattle brain disease that causes a similar disease in some humans who eat infected meat. It has killed 166 people in Britain since 1994.^[44]

The United Kingdom was created in the Acts of Union in 1707, at which time Jethro Tull had recently invented his famous rotating-cylinder seed drill. His 1731 book, The New Horse Hoeing Husbandry, explained the systems and devices he espoused to improve agriculture and had such an impact that its influence can still be seen in some aspects of modern farming.^[45]

Between 1750 and 1850, the English population nearly trebled, from an estimated 5.7 million to an estimated 16.6 million, and all these people had to be fed from the domestic food supply. This was achieved through intensified agriculture and land reclamation from the Fens, woodlands, and upland pastures.^[46] The crop mix changed too, with wheat and rye replacing barley. The introduction of the turnip allowed fertility to be maintained with much less fallow land.^[47] Nitrogen fixing plants such as legumes led to sustainable increased yields.^[48] These increased yields, combined with improved farming machinery and then-new capitalist ways of organising labour, meant that increased crop production did not require much more manpower, which freed up more people for non-agricultural work. Indeed, by 1850 Britain had the smallest proportion of its population engaged in farming of any country in the world, at 22%.^[49]

However, this period included a twenty-year depression in agriculture that started with the end of the Napoleonic Wars and lasted until 1836. So severe was this depression that landlords as well as tenants suffered financial ruin, and large areas of farmland were entirely abandoned. This showed the problems of the ancient landlord and tenant system in running new-style, capital-intensive farms, and it caused concern in Parliament. The system began to distinguish between farm improvements that the tenant should fund, and those the landlord should fund.^[50]

Parliament repealed the Corn Laws in 1846. This steadied prices, but agriculture remained prosperous. At that time, Parliament was concerned with the issue of tenant right, i.e. the sum payable to an outgoing tenant for farm improvements that the tenant had funded and, if crops were in the ground when the tenant left, compensation for their value. This was down to local custom and the custom in one place might be very different to another. In 1848 a parliamentary committee examined the possibility of a standardised system, but no Bill on this matter passed through Parliament until 1875.^[51]

The American Civil War ended in 1865, and by 1875, with new steam-powered railways and ships, the United States was exporting a substantial excess of cereals. At the same time, Britain suffered a series of poor harvests. By 1891 reliable refrigeration technology brought frozen meat from Australia, New Zealand and South America to the British market, and Parliament felt it had to intervene to support British farming. The Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1875 revamped the law on tenant right such that tenants received consistent levels of compensation for the value of their improvements to the holding and any crops in the ground. It also gave tenants the right to remove fixtures they had provided, increased the period of a Notice to Quit from six months to twelve, and brought in an agricultural dispute resolution procedure.^[52]

Some Landlords reacted to the 1875 Act by refusing to let land on a tenancy, instead contracting out the labour to contract farmers. Parliament responded with the Agricultural Holdings (England) Act 1883, which prevented contracting out on terms less favourable than a normal tenancy. Subsequent Agricultural Holdings Acts in 1900 and 1906 further refined the dispute resolution procedure; required landlords to compensate tenants for their damaged crops if the damage was caused by game that the landlord did not allow tenants to kill; allowed tenants to choose for themselves what crops to grow, except in the last year of the tenancy; and prevented penal rents being charged except in special circumstances. The mass of legislation was consolidated in another Act of 1908. Further Agricultural Holdings Acts came into force in 1914, two in 1920, and a further consolidating Act in 1923.^[53]

The country's mood during this period was affected by the First World War. There was a national feeling that a man who had fought for his country should be entitled to retire to a smallholding on British land that would provide him with a livelihood. This led to various initiatives, collectively called Homes for Heroes. By 1926 agricultural law had become openly redistributive in favour of ex-servicemen. County Councils had compulsory purchase powers to requisition land they could let as smallholdings on which ex-servicemen were the preferred tenants. The tenant could then buy the land from the Council, and could require the Council to lend them money to fund the purchase as a mortgage. The council could only refuse with the Minister of Agriculture's permission.^[54]

The Agriculture Act 1947 broadly revamped agricultural law. It was a reaction to the privations of the Second World War, and was aimed at food security, so as to reduce the risk of a hostile foreign power being able to starve the UK into submission. The Act guaranteed prices, markets and tenure, so that a farmer could be assured that his land would not be taken away and whatever he grew would be sold at a known price. Yet another consolidating Agricultural Holdings Act followed it in 1948. These Acts enabled a tenant to react to a Notice to Quit by serving a Counter-Notice that nullified the Notice to Quit and forced the matter before an Agricultural Land Tribunal. With the new security enjoyed by farm tenants, a system of rent reviews was necessary to take account of land price inflation. There were many other changes in the law, and these Acts required regular negotiations from time to time between the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers Union (NFU) to fix the support price to be paid for each agricultural product. These were enacted in a series of Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Acts in 1949, 1954, 1963, 1968 and 1972.^[55]

The Agriculture (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1976 was another far-reaching revamp of the law. At the time it was passed, the Lib-Lab Pact of 1976 needed Plaid Cymru's support in Parliament, and the provisions of this Act were Plaid Cymru's price for their vote. This Act allowed for succession of agricultural tenancies, so on a farmer's death, a relative with relevant skills or experience and no holding of his own could inherit the tenancy. This was limited to two generations of tenant.^[56]

On government instructions, the Northfield Committee began to review the country's agricultural system in 1977. It did not report until July 1979, by which time Margaret Thatcher's administration held power. The report influenced ongoing discussions between the NFU and the Country Landowners Association (CLA), who were trying to reach an agreement on new Agricultural Holdings legislation that could be presented to Parliament as having industry-wide support. This was agreed in 1984, but the two sides had not been able to agree a fundamental change to the security of tenure legislation. It did change the succession rules for existing tenancies such that a farmer might pass on his tenancy on retirement as well as on death--but no new tenancies from 1984 were to include succession rights.^[57]

By this time the then European Economic Community (now the European Community)'s Common Agricultural Policy was having a direct impact on farming. The Agriculture Act 1986 was concerned with the value of the milk quota attached to land, and particularly how it ought to be shared between landlord and tenant. Nowadays, milk quotas are worth less, but other subsidies (largely rolled up into Single Payments) still need to be divided between the parties.^[58]

Organic farming is farming without chemical fertilisers, animal cruelty, most pesticides, genetic modification, or the routine use of drugs, antibiotics or wormers. In the United Kingdom it is supported and encouraged by the Soil Association.^[59] The Food Standards Agency says that organic food offers no additional nutritional benefits over the non-organic kind,^[60] though the Soil Association disputes this.^[61] However, there are definite benefits in terms of conservation and wildlife.^[62] In the UK as in most of northern Europe, organic crop yields can be 40%-50% lower than conventional, more intensive farming and labour use can be 10%-25% higher.^[63]

The Organic Aid Scheme came into effect in 1994, providing grants to fund farmers wishing to convert to organic farming. By the end of 1997 about 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) had been converted under the scheme, at a cost totalling £750,000.^[64] In 2000 it increased to 525,000 hectares (1,300,000 acres), and between 1996 and 2000, the number of organic farms increased from 865 to 3500.^[65] The global market for organic food is worth £1.2 billion a year and is increasing.^[66]

Biofuels are fuels derived from biomass. They can be used in their pure form to power vehicles, but most commonly they are blended with traditional fuels such as diesel. In 2003, the European Union saw biofuels as an answer to several problems: climate change, energy security and stimulating the rural economy, and agreed the Biofuels Directive to see that production was kickstarted. In 2008, the Gallagher Review expressed concern about the effects of the biofuels initiative and identified the conversion of agricultural land to biofuels production as a factor in rising food prices. The current recommended option is that farmers should use marginal or waste land to produce biofuels and maintain production of food on prime agricultural land.^[67]

The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation ("RTFO") obliges fuel suppliers to see that a certain proportion of the fuel they sell comes from renewable sources. The target for 2009/10 is 3.25% by volume.^[68] This presents a potentially useful source of revenue for some farmers.

Biofuel crops grown in the UK include oilseed rape (which is also grown for other purposes), short-rotation coppices such as poplar or willow, and miscanthus. Unfortunately biofuels are quite bulky for their energy yield, which means processing into fuel needs to happen near where the crop is grown; otherwise, most or all of the benefit of biofuels can be lost in transporting the biofuel to the processing area. Such local processing units are not generally available in the UK, and further expansion of this market will depend on politics and industrial finance.^[69]

Many farmers struggle to make ends meet from a purely agricultural income, and therefore supplement their finances through non-farming activities. This is called diversification. Since time immemorial sporting rights over farmland, for hunting or trapping game, have had commercial value;^[70] nowadays, grouse shooting, deer stalking and fishing are important sporting activities. Fox hunting previously went on, but has been banned in the United Kingdom since February 2005.^[71]

There are a huge number of ways of diversifying. Farmland may, for example, be converted to equestrian facilities, amenity parkland, country clubs, hotels, golf courses, camping and caravan sites. Until 1993 farmers could obtain a grant for this last kind of diversification under the Farm Diversification Scheme.^[72] Farmers open shops, restaurants and even pubs to sell their products.^[73]

It was first suggested that farmers could be paid for "producing countryside" in 1969, but the real beginning of positive agri-environmental policy came with the Agriculture Act 1986. The Countryside Stewardship Scheme and local equivalents were run by the Countryside Commission and the Countryside Council for Wales from 1991 until 1996, when they came under ministry control. Nowadays schemes to encourage farmers to think about wildlife conservation and to farm in an environmentally friendly way abound, though actual payments to farmers to support this are comparatively modest.^[74]

In the 1930s land with vacant possession cost an average of £60 per hectare. In 1996 it cost £8,795 per hectare.^[75] Between those times retail prices rose by a factor of 35, but agricultural land prices rose by a factor of well over 100.^[76] The most extreme change was in 1972, during which year the price per acre more than doubled. Today farming land remains scarce and much in demand, and the market is still rising even in the current recession.^[77] Thus the only option for someone who lacks capital for land purchase but wants to farm is to rent land as a tenant farmer.

Historically tenant farmers, as peasants or villeins, had been exploited and starting in 1875, successive governments enacted legislation to protect them. This trend culminated in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1986, ^{[Notes 1]} which consolidated and built on a century-long trend in the law. This Act was so onerous towards landlords that they were reluctant to let land. It became so hard to obtain a tenancy that the farming industry supported reform, which was enacted in the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995. Nowadays most new tenancies in England and Wales are Farm Business Tenancies under the 1995 Act, but the 1986 Act tenancies that are still in force allow for succession, and can be passed down through up to two generations of tenant. The most common route of entry into farming is to succeed to a holding, whether as owner or tenant, so a person's ability to farm is often determined by their family background rather than their skills or qualifications.^[78]

Recognising this, fifty County Councils and Unitary Authorities in England and Wales offer tenancies on smallholdings (called "County Farms") as an entry route into agriculture, but this provision is shrinking. Between 1984 and 2006, the amount of land available as County Farms shrank from 137,664 hectares (340,180 acres) to 96,206 hectares (237,730 acres), a reduction of 30%. The number of tenants on these smallholdings shrank by 58% in the same period.^[79] Although County Farms are the main route into farming for new entrants, Local Authorities are under increasing pressure to dispose of County Farms to obtain capital receipts.^[80]

• Economy of the United Kingdom
• Forestry in the United Kingdom
• Beekeeping in the United Kingdom
• Agriculture in England

• Agriculture in Scotland

Footnotes

Bibliography

Periodicals

Citations

• DEFRA
• National Farmers Union
• Farming Help (Farming charities)
• NewsNow: Agriculture