Suchergebnisse

This article focuses upon the neglected role of agriculture in Britain's relative economic decline. Landlords and farmers stand accused of responding inadequately to the flood of American cereal imports. Land‐use changes are analysed by soil type and access to urban markets, revealing a range of opportunities and restraints, and an appropriate variety of responses. Other aspects of agriculturalists' responses to depression remain to be examined, but this exercise finds no evidence of significant managerial shortcomings. Rather, the interim verdict is similar to that on the performance of those British industrialists whose once‐savaged reputations have been partly redeemed by the researches of McCloskey, Sandberg, et al.

This article examines an agricultural dimension of the `entrepreneurial failure' debate. It is often claimed that structural change in agriculture was retarded by the conservatism of agriculturalists in the south east who, allegedly, persisted with corn when price changes signalled a switch to meat and dairying. Existing price series and the price evidence as it appeared to farmers and landlords at the time are re‐examined and shown to be neither clear nor consistent. The evidence suggests that contrasts in the fortunes of livestock and arable farmers have been exaggerated and that in this respect, even if not others, arable farmers were less irrational than their critics suppose.