ARABLE. The social movements of the age, especially the later developments of the industrial revolution in Britain, have given a peculiar emphasis to the word arable and the condition it describes. For purposes of agriculture the "land" is commonly divided in British official statistics into grass land and arable land, or soil that is left continuously undisturbed and soil that is at intervals ploughed or otherwise cultivated. But the two are not so easy to distinguish, either by the casual observer or the statistician, as they once were. The practice of sowing "leys" is now very common. "Seeds," as they are generally known among farmers, are sown on the arable land along with or rather later than the cereal crop, and when the corn is cut, giving place to sown mixtures of grass or clover, the field may assume very nearly the appearance of a meadow; and may never return to tillage.
In the period of depression of British farming that began in 1920 many farmers sowed "seeds" in order to watch events. If times continued bad, the "leys" would be allowed to remain for the maximum period and thereafter in the worse cases degenerate into grass. If, on the other hand, prosperity returned they would be ploughed up. But the general distinction holds. Arable land is usually ploughed, or otherwise stirred once a year, but it is still classed as arable, if the intention is to use the plough again, as soon as the "seeds" have served their purpose. It is becoming a custom therefore in official statistics to divide the arable area in a country into two main groups : the land actually ploughed in any one year and the acreage carrying clover and sown rotation grasses.
The proportion of tilled land at vari ous junctures has changed more abruptly in Britain than in any other country of which authentic accounts exist. One of the most remarkable facts in Domesday Book is the great amount of arable land recorded at that date in many English counties. At its publi cation in I 086 the plough was a very simple machine—with a short handle and a big wheel—and the sods were broken with a mattock, the harrowing done with a large rake. Nevertheless, the arable area in general was much bigger at the end of the I I th century than at the beginning of the 19th. The most remarkable figures relate to Somerset and Gloucester. In Somerset the tilled area had reached 577,00o acres in io86, and 238,456 in 1907. The end of the period of abundant tillage may be dated from 1348, the year of the Black Death. But other causes were at work, as well as pestilence. We know that meadow land was much more valuable than arable long before the plague, being rented on the average at 2s. as compared with 6d. for ploughed land. The re lapse of arable to grass in the 14th century was not made good. The doggerel maxim "Up horn, down corn" was popular at a later age, and Tudor husbandmen in all parts of the country "substituted pasture for tillage, sheep for corn. They took their seats on the woolsack, and maidens of all degrees were spinsters." When mutton became more important than wool towards the close of the i8th century, farming improved, but there was no general break-up of the sheepwalk. The modern Danish proof that arable will carry more stock than grass land was not yet appreciated. In subsequent history the proportion of arable to pasture has oscillated this way and that, in rough relation to the price of wheat (which touched its highest points in 1855 and 1921). But the loss of arable has been continuous in Great Britain in modern times since the disastrous harvest of 5879. The weather of that year was the occasion for an acceleration of a change due to more lasting causes, such as cheaper transport and the ploughing of virgin land overseas, in North America, in the Argentine, in Australia and in other places.
Taking the single years 1871 and 1925 the arable area of Britain declined by about 4,300,000 acres, from 14,950,000 to Io,68o,000; and the proportion of arable from 56.8% to 41.5%. If only the cultivated area is taken (excluding rough grazing) about one-third is ploughed annually and two thirds are either permanent grass or rotation grasses. In regard to the proportion of arable in England the country may be roughly divided into three groups. The eastern counties from the Thames to Flamborough Head are markedly arable. The south-eastern counties of Kent, Sussex, Surrey, Hants and Berks, with Oxford and Worcestershire, occupy a middle place, and all western counties, with Northumberland, Durham and the West Riding are chiefly grass.
While the proportion of arable land to grass decreased in Britain it was notably augmented in many countries of a very different nature. When Danish farmers began to surrender corn growing for dairying, they often increased the ratio of arable land, plus lucerne or some such cultivated green crop. They grew gramineous crops for fodder instead of grain for food, and diminished the permanent grass to a minimum.
most salient extension of arable land in the world is to the credit of the so-called prairie provinces of Canada; and a like development continues to progress in Australia. A good example of the purposeful extension of the corn area is to be seen in the south of Western Australia. The Canadian figures are very re markable. There were only a half million acres under wheat in 1871. Then the discovery of a wheat that would ripen in the north and endure the climate sent the ploughs to the far north, and the arable area for growing wheat alone had increased in 1926 to 23,000,000 acres, with prospects of yet greater extension.
While the arable area in northern Canada has been increased, thanks chiefly to the "creation" of new varieties of grain, many of the hot, dry lands of the south of the United States have come under cultivation thanks to the art of "dry farming," or so treating the surface by repeated but shallow tillage that the moisture cannot escape by capillary attraction. (W. B. T.) (See AGRICULTURE and AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.)
