The potential for change in agriculture in the United Kingdom: technical aspects.

The present pattern of British Agriculture has been determined by the physical factors of climate, soil and topography, on which are superimposed technical and economic factors. In considering the potential for change we must work within the physical limitations, assume that an optimum balance of food nutrients supplied by home agriculture could be defined and that economic restraints would be removed. This may be a Utopian or an Orwellian situation but it provides a framework for this paper. That British agriculture is capable of change is evident from the records of the past century and of the post-war period. There has been a considerable increase in food production and there have also been considerable changes in emphasis (Table I), for example, the expansion in milk and meat, especially poultry meat, production, the decline in fodder roots, the expansion in vegetable production and in barley production.