Presentatie voor seminariereeks van het Interfacultair Centrum Agrarische Geschiedenis (ICAG, KU Leuven), 2011.

1. DYNAMIC AGRICULTURE,
STATIC COUNTRYSIDE
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF MODERNITY IN RURAL ENGLAND,
1945‐2000
Dr Jeremy Burchardt
Department of History
University of Reading
UK

2. British agricultural output and productivity
Volume of output doubled between 1944 and 1974, growing at 2.5% per
annum.
Wheat yields increased by 2.6% per annum between 1952 and 1986, rising
from about 2 tonnes per hectare to about 8 tonnes per hectare.
Barley yields increased by 2.0% per annum between 1952 and 1982.
Milk (20% of the value of UK agriculture output in the 1950s):
• little improvement in yields before 1939
• yields rose by 60 litres per cow per annum between 1950 and 1970
• yields rose by 100 litres per cow per annum between 1970 and 1982
• almost 5,000 litres per cow per year was attained in 1983

3. Labour productivity
Size of the agricultural workforce
• 1951: 1,100,000 6% of the total British
workforce
• 1996: 529,000 2% of the total British
workforce
Gross output per worker more than doubled*
• 1951: £15,535
• 1996: £38,712
*(at 2001 prices)
Calculated from Burrell, Hill and Medland, Handbook of UK Agriculture, 1986

4. Technological change: arable
Plant breeding
• Half of the increase in wheat yields between 1947 and 1975 is
attributable to improved varieties.
Nitrogen fertiliser
• The quantity of nitrogen fertiliser used by British farmers increased
five times between 1945 and 2001.
Pesticides
• Potential loss to British agriculture from pests is c. 30%.
• Actual loss is now only 5% of the national crop.

5. Technological change: livestock
Artificial insemination
• As early as 1957 half the cows in England and
Wales were served by just 700 bulls.
Cattle fodder
• Hay: 50 to 70% of the feeding value of fresh
grass.
• Silage: 90% of the feeding value of fresh grass.

6. Mechanization (1)
Horses (late 1930s)
• still 650,000 farm horses employed in British agriculture:
• more than half the total draught power
• doing about two thirds of the total work
• but virtually eliminated by 1955
Tractors
• late 1930s < 60,000
• 1986 532,000
E J T Collins, ‘The agricultural tractor in Britain 1900‐1940’, in Harald Winkel and Klaus Hermann, eds, The development of
agricultural technology in the nineteenth and twentieth, Ostfildern, 1984, p 23.
H F Marks and D K Britton, A hundred years of British food and farming. A statistical survey, London 1989, p 146.

7. Mechanization (2)
Combine harvesters (England and Wales)
1942 940
1966 67,000
Milking machine installations
1942 24,000
1961 107,000
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, A century of agricultural statistics. Great Britain 1866‐1966, London 1968, p
71; H F Marks and D K Britton, A hundred years of British food and farming. A statistical survey, London 1989, p 146.

8. Rural craftworkers
1911 census
• 125,300 blacksmiths
• 23,700 wheelwrights
• 24,400 saddlers
• 3,600 thatchers (1891)
2000
• 700 blacksmiths
• 15 wheelwrights
• 600 thatchers
J Chartres, ‘The retail trades and agricultural services’, in E J T Collins, ed, The agrarian history of England and Wales, VII,
1850‐1914, Part II, Cambridge 2000, p 1153, 1163.
E J T Collins, personal communication.

9. Rural craftworkers in Hampshire

10. Agricultural Workers
Hired agricultural workers
• 889,000 in 1946
• 286,000 in 1987
The number of farmers also fell but not nearly so rapidly
• 294,000 (1931 census)
• 252,000 (1987 agricultural statistics)
Ratio of farmworkers to farmers
• 3:1 (1931)
• 1:1 (1987)
Annual agricultural statistics (Great Britain); Marks and Britton p 138.

11. Trade Union membership
Membership of the National Union of
Agricultural Workers (NUAW)
136,372 in 1948
94,497 in 1970 (40% non‐agricultural)
22,000 in 2000 (‘rural, agricultural and allied’)
Howard Newby, The deferential worker. A study of farm workers in East Anglia, London 1977, pp 228, 254
http://www.huntinginquiry.gov.uk/evidence/tgwu.htm

12. Rural population of the United
Kingdom
1951 10.4 million (20% national total)
1971 12.8 million (23%)
1999 <14 million (28%) England alone
The Countryside Agency, The state of the countryside 2001, Wetherby 2001, p26.

13. Habitat change
• ‘losses of 88 per cent of lowland heath [and] 21 per cent of
permanent grassland’ (south‐east Scotland)
• The English landscape ‘was a true ‘palimpsest’ – a plate which
when held up and examined closely yielded the secrets of its
long and varied history. All is now changing in the face of
twentieth‐century technology. The plate is now experiencing
a complete resurfacing, degraded by the power of modern
machinery.’
L F Curtis, ‘Conservation and protection’, in R J Johnston and Vince
Gardiner, The changing geography of the United Kingdom, 2nd edn,
London 1991, pp 451, 470.

14. Another perspective?
‘Travel Britain’ (UK’s official tourist website)
• England’s ‘majestic moorland and craggy peaks, lush green fields and fens, wide
sandy beaches and quaint fishing villages’
• ‘England is not just countryside’
Loss of rural land to urban uses
• under 12% of England’s surface area is urban
• <16,000 ha. of agricultural land lost to urban uses between 1945 and 1975
• this is less than 2/3 of the rate of loss in the 1930s
• rate of loss only 0.05% per annum between 1945 and 1990.
http://www.travelbritain.org/newhome/whereto/WTengland.htm.
Michael J Breheny, ‘Did planning save the countryside?’, unpublished paper given at Reading Town Hall, 5 March 2002.
M L Parry, ‘The changing use of land’, in R J Johnston and Vince Gardiner, The changing geography of the United Kingdom,
2nd edn, London 1991, pp 20, 23.

15. Vegetative cover (1)
• The percentage of England under permanent grass or rough
grazings fell by only 4% between 1953 and 1973
• Percentage of Great Britain which is ploughed has remained stable
at between 40% and 50% since 1945.
• Woodland in the UK increased from 5% in 1900 to 11% in 1999.
• In west Berkshire the loss of woodland between 1947 and 1981 was
less than 25%.
John Bowers and Paul Cheshire, Agriculture, the countryside and land use. An economic critique, London 1983, p
19; Parry, p 29.
The Countryside Agency, The state of the countryside 2001, Wetherby 2001, p 15.
Bowers and Cheshire, p 32.

16. Vegetative cover (2)
Curtis: only one‐sixth of the ‘original’ area of Dorset heathland remained by 1978. But
most of this was in the mid c. 19th: in the 49 years between 1811 and 1860 the
acreage of heathland fell by 2/3, whereas in the 118 years between 1861 and 1978
it fell by only 1/2.
Hedgerows – highly regional
• West Berkshire: reduction of 43% between 1947 and 1981.
• South‐west England: reduction of only 15% between 1947 and 1985.
• England: reduction of 25% between 1947 and 1980, since when the rate of loss
has diminished sharply.
Curtis, p 451.
Bowers and Cheshire, p 19.
The Countryside Agency, The state of the countryside 2001, Wetherby 2001, p 12.
Department of the Environment and the Countryside Commission, ‘Monitoring of landscape change’ (report by Hunting
surveys and consultants), 1986.

17. Axe valley, Somerset
1972
1983
1994
2005

18. Government and agricultural
modernization
1946 Hill Farming Act; National Agricultural Advisory Service
(later ADAS)
1947 Agriculture Act (guaranteed prices; production grants)
1957 Agriculture Act (Farm Improvement Scheme)
1967 Agriculture Act (amalgamation of uneconomic farms;
hill farm improvement)
1973 UK joins the CAP

19. Rural Preservationism
Rural preservation organisations:
• Commons Preservation Society 1865
• National Trust 1895 (circa)
• Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) 1926.
Planning legislation
• 1932 Town and Country Planning Act
• 1947 Town and Country Planning Act
– nationalised development rights
– rural land to be used for agriculture

20. Powers of planning authorities over
agricultural landscape
1960: any agricultural building more than 5,000 foot square
requires planning permission
1967: any agricultural building more than 40 foot tall requires
planning permission
Tree Preservation Orders (1947)
Conservation Areas (Civic Amenities Act 1967)
Philip Lowe, Graham Cox, MacEwen, O’Riordan and Michael Winter, Countryside conflicts, Aldershot 1986, p 26.
Mark Blacksell and Andrew Gilg, The countryside: planning and change, London 1981, p 14.

21. Landscape preservation policies of
local authorities
Surrey County Council plan (1971) aims to:
‘control development [in the countryside] so as to
preserve the charm and character…and to this
end, to permit only such development as may be
required in connection with the needs of the rural
community and limited infilling which, in both
style and layout, will be worthy of its setting.’
Brian J Woodruffe, Rural settlement policies and plans, Oxford 1976, pp 46, 57‐9.

22. Conservation legislation
1949 National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act
• National Parks
• Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty
• Nature Conservancy
» National Nature Reserves
» Sites of Special Scientific Interest.
• Management agreements (1981 Wildlife and
Countryside Act)
• Environmentally Sensitive Areas and Countryside
Stewardship schemes (1980s/90s).
The Countryside Agency, The state of the countryside 2001, pp 17‐18, 21‐2.

23. The contradictions of modernity
Andreas Huyssen:
‘we are beginning to explore its [i.e. modernism’s]
contradictions and contingencies, its tensions and
internal resistances to its own “forward” movement’.

24. DYNAMIC AGRICULTURE, STATIC COUNTRYSIDE: THE CONTRADICTIONS
OF MODERNITY IN RURAL ENGLAND
Dr Jeremy Burchardt, Department of History, University of Reading, UK
This paper examines the paradoxical persistence of traditional features within a context of
rapid modernization in the English countryside since 1939 and explicates them through an
analysis of the contradictory character of urban attitudes towards the countryside.
The English countryside experienced radical socio-economic transformation in the half-
century since the end of the Second World War with respect to population, employment and
the nature of agricultural production. Mechanisation played a central role in these changes.
Prior to 1939 tractors, combine harvesters and milking machines were scarce but a
combination of technological advances, guaranteed prices, production grants and the 'price
squeeze' imposed by policy makers led to a dramatic increase in uptake after the war. The
structure of the rural population was significantly affected: one occupational group, rural
craftworkers (notably wheelwrights, thatchers and blacksmiths) disappeared almost entirely,
and another, agricultural workers, declined steeply in numbers. The relationship between
farmworkers and their employers changed from an often adversarial one to a more
paternalistic pattern as the average number of full-time employed workers per farm fell to
below one. This trend was reinforced by counter-urban migration, affecting initially the
south-east but spreading to virtually all parts of England by the end of the twentieth century.
Counterurbanization brought a new wave of mainly middle-class incomers to the countryside,
creating a divide between 'old' and 'new' inhabitants. Villages which in the early twentieth
century were predominantly low-income occupational communities in most cases became
high-income 'dormitory' or retirement settlements.
Yet in other respects, notably with regard to landscape, continuity was as marked a feature as
change. Whilst environmentalists criticised modern farming practices for their effects on
vulnerable habitats, England's rural landscape nevertheless remained famously 'traditional'.
Although new crops such as oilseed rape and maize were introduced, the celebrated
patchwork of colours of the English countryside remained essentially as it was. The major
landscape features, such as small woods, streams and gentle hills, were modified only
modestly since 1939. Even the built environment altered little: older buildings were carefully
conserved, whilst new housing was often based on discreet infill.
How can we explain the paradox of a countryside radically transformed in socio-economic
terms, but remarkably constant in landscape and land use? Since the industrial revolution,
urban England has valued the countryside for two quite different products: food and beauty.
The 1947 Agriculture Act perpetuated the century-old policy of promoting a modern,
efficient, highly productive agriculture geared towards low cost food. Yet its twin, the 1947
Town and Country Planning Act, reinforced the equally deep-rooted demand for an
unchanging countryside providing city-dwellers with a refuge from the discontents of urban
industrialism. The illusion that the countryside could both be radically modernised and yet
remain an unchanging refuge from modernity depended on urban ignorance of the real
processes of change at work within agriculture, yet paradoxically this condition was
progressively undermined by counterurbanisation, itself in part a corollary of the idealisation
of the countryside. One way of understanding the Countryside Movement of the late 1990s
onwards is as an attempt to displace these contradictions from rural England by projecting
them onto a reified (and largely mythical) urban 'other'.