Until 1914, there was a general belief that people in towns were fed by the countryside. It was obvious to contemporaries that the countryside was engaged in agriculture, though its larger estates still provided opportunities for rural pastimes such as hunting and shooting which reflected past relationships between men of property and the land. However, towards the end of the nineteenth century, the countryside was no longer the centre of political power it had once been and, as the urban population grew, the countryside no longer had the capacity to feed the towns. From 1860 onwards, the adoption of a free trade policy meant that the urban demand for cheap food had defeated the landed interests that had sought to maintain the countryside as the towns’ principal source of supply for commodities such as bread-grains, meat and vegetables. The advocates of cheap food – the industrialists and urban middle classes – were eager to import foodstuffs from abroad if that was cheaper than producing food at home. Britain's trading capacities, both commercial and maritime, made this possible. During the second half of the nineteenth century imports of principal foodstuffs grew and from the 1870s agriculture began a decline that lasted for some 60 years. Cereal-producing areas of southeastern England, particularly those on heavy clay soils, were depressed from 1879 as grain prices fell. Although under free trade agriculture was subject to market forces, the government could not completely ignore its plight. The creation of the Board of Agriculture in 1889 was as far as the state went in unifying various countryside interests. From 1885 to 1914, price falls extended into livestock and dairy produce. By 1913, 53 per cent of cultivated land was under grass. Few people gave much thought to the effects of a free trade policy upon the food supply until the question was raised in the context of the growing militarism of the Edwardian years. In 1905, the Royal Commission on the Supply of Food and Raw Materials in Time of War presented an assessment that showed the extent to which the sources of Britain's food had changed.