Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
pending upon location and the average elevation of the location. Taking
station proximity alone, the main tendency was for wheat acreage to
decline slightly as the distance to the nearest stations increased. But
when joined with the effect of terrain elevation, that main tendency was
inflected. As shown in figure 1.5, the influence of station distance was
negative in the areas shown in gray and positive in those shown in black.
From 1881 to 1891 in upland areas where wheat production had been
extensive, wheat acreage tended to increase or remain stable in parishes
farther
from stations; in the lowlands, in contrast, parishes
closer
to a sta-
tion showed an increase in acreage compared to lowland parishes farther
away. The evident complexity well reminds us that we are dealing with a
complicated history of short- and long-term decisions by farmers of the
period in the face of shifting markets, weather, and leasing conditions.
This complexity calls for further study and the incorporation of other
factors, such as travel distance or travel time along roads (as opposed to
the straight-line Cartesian distance), numbers of catle and other com-
peting agricultural activities and crops, the varied farming ecologies of
the county, the freight-handling capacity of stations, and so forth.
33
W hat about changes in livestock? Somewhat surprisingly, our analy-
ses - using ordinary least-squares regression, GWR, and other spatial sta-
tistics - found no significant effect of rail accessibility on changes in the
size of catle herds over two decades from 1871 to 1891. his suggests - in
keeping with the paterns displayed for cows in igure 1.4 - that the ex-
pansion of catle raising in Dorset
intensified;
it did not spread widely
over the county. Further, this intensification was determined by factors
other than rail proximity in the 1870s and 1880s. If the parish returns
for those years had distinguished dairy cows from beef catle, we would
likely find an effect of rail accessibility and dairy farming, because the
fresh milk trade depended upon railways to get products to major urban
markets.
France: The Department of the Côte-d'Or
The French Department of the Côte-d'Or presents a story with similari-
ties and differences. There, as in France generally, the tariffs on wheat
introduced in 1883 shielded cereal farming from international competi-
