Dating the revolution

No doubt future historians will argue about the precise dating of the beginning and the end of the modern revolution in agriculture, in much the same way as they have argued about the dates of the agricultural revolutions of the eighteenth century and earlier. These future arguments will revolve around questions about what criteria to use to judge the extent of change. If government policies designed to support agriculture are considered, then it can be argued that the revolution began either in 1931 with the establishment of marketing boards or in 1947 with the Agriculture Act. Its end would then be marked by the first inroads made on the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Community by the imposition of quotas, the taking of land out of cultivation and other measures employed to reduce surpluses of food commodities in Europe. If the quantities of food produced are the measure, then the first increases in output of cereals, potatoes and sugar beet occurred in the late 1930s and the early years of the Second World War, but increases in the production of beef and other meats did not take place until the 1950s. If productivity as measured by yield per hectare is the criterion adopted, then the beginning can be estimated as the year of intersection of the negligible change in production before the Second World War with the positive relation between yield and time observed in the post-war period.