Abstract

Effects of Land Tenure and Taxation. Conditions of tenure and taxation of land play an important part in promoting or impeding agricultural improve- ment. For more than a century in Great Britain lendership in farming was in the hands of landlords who had enlarged and enclosed their estates by buying off the numerous strips of yeoman farmers, often with the profits made in trade and invested capital in long-term improvements like drainage works and farm buildings and did pioneer work in the cultivation of better crops and the breed. ing of pedigree stock. It is the success of these ventures that made Britain the pioneer of modern agriculture, as well as of large-scale manufactures. This period of prosperity Insted for over a century-from 1750 to 1870. After 1870, however. American competition killed cereal farming; there was a continuous fall in rents, while the cost of cultivation, particularly wages, increased. Arable. farming gave place to grass farming and stock-raising. Industries were more paying than agriculture. Industrial magnates bought land more for its amenities and social prestige than for its profits as a farm enterprise or for the love of agricultural research. Research indeed passed into the hands of several special- ists and it was beyond the capacity of any landlord to set himself up as a leader in science or technique, Continuous increase in income-tax and death duties led to the break-up of big estates and many old farmers became, in the first thirty years of this century, occupying owners with the help of the State. But a decade of falling prices has impoverished these owners too, who have little capital left to work their farms. Small holdings in certain specialised lines of agriculture like dairying, fruit culture and vegetables are still favoured, but for staple cereals Inrge scale mechanised farming with State ownership of land und control of cultivation is advocated.

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