Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1.4.
Changes in catle raising and wheat farming, Dorset County, 1870 compared
to 1901.
Sources:
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and predecessors:
Statistics Divisions: Parish Summaries of Agricultural Returns, Dorset County,
1871 and 1901, MAF 68, National Archives, Kew; parish boundaries provided
by Ian Gregory, University of Lancaster.
less proitable practice of sending store catle on foot to graziers in fat-
tening regions or to owners of feedlots. Four Welsh counties so affected
were Anglesey, Denbighshire, Flintshire, and Pembrokeshire.
29
Similar
paterns held true for France.
30
If railways helped British and French farmers adapt themselves to
difficult circumstances during the agrarian depression of the 1880s and
1890s, then a review of specific evidence should help confirm or refine
this proposition. Selecting two cases from our existing data, we take up
the county of Dorset in England and the Department of the Côte-d'Or in
France.
31
In Dorset we used GIS data at the parish level from the returns
of the agricultural census in 1871 and 1901 to map the density of cereal
production and catle at these two dates - the irst before the agrarian
crisis, the second after its abatement. In both cases, the decline of wheat
