Silage in Britain, 1880-1990: The delayed adoption of an innovation

Agricultural History Review

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 63-87

  Brassley, Paul ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

AGRICULTURAL HISTORY; ECONOMIC CHANGE; HISTORICAL STUDY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SILAGE TECHNIQUE; TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

UK;

EID: 0030427440     PISSN: 00021490     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Review

References (241)

1. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, act 4, scene 1, line 33, in S Wells and G Taylor, eds, William Shakespeare: The Complete Works, 1988, p 326.
2. J E Thorold Rogers, Ensilage in America: Its Prospects in English Agriculture, 1883. The letter to The Times of 23 October 1882 is printed as an appendix to this book.
3. According to John T Schlebecker, Whereby We Thrive: A History of American Farming, 1607-1972, Ames, Iowa, 1975, p 183, the first silo was built in the USA in 1873, by the 1890s most dairy farmers used silage, and by 1914 it was becoming popular in cattle feeding areas. I am grateful to Dr Douglas E Bowers, head of the Agricultural and Rural History Section in the United States Department of Agriculture, for providing me with this and many other references.
4. B H Green, 'The impact of agricultural management practices on the ecology of grasslands,' p 1.9,
5. T C E Wells, 'Responsible management for botanical diversity' pp 4.4-4.7,
6. both papers presented to British Grassland Society meeting on Environmentally Responsible Grassland Management, Hurley, Berks, 1989;
7. A Colston and J Best, 'Vanishing meadows', Natural World, No 32, 1991, pp 22-24;
8. A Crofts and R G Jefferson, eds, The Lowland Grassland Management Handbook, 1994, esp p 5:8.
9. am grateful to Caroline Steel of The Wildlife Trusts for this reference. For the corncrake, see also John Arlidge, 'Crofters' care makes isles a haven for corncrakes,' The Independent, 10 August 1994, p 5, which reported that farmers in the Western Isles of Scotland were being paid up to £50 per hectare by various conservation bodies to delay harvesting hay meadows until 1 August in order to allow corncrake chicks to fledge before the grass was cut. Many of those on the island of Tiree were reported to use the money to pay for baling their silage.
10. J Wrightson, 'The agricultural lessons of "the Eighties"', JRASE, 3rd ser, 1, 1890, p 285.
11. P McDonald, The Biochemistry of Silage, Chichester, 1981, pp 11-12 and 42-59;
12. H I Moore, Grassland Husbandry, 1946, pp 94-5;
13. J S Brockman, 'Grassland', in R J Halley and R J Soffe, eds, The Agricultural Notebook, 18th ed, 1992, pp 198-200.
14. McDonald, Biochemistry of Silage, p 10;
15. K D White, Roman Farming, 1970, p 428;
16. storage vessels for grain are referred to as silos in S Isager and J E Skydsgaard, Ancient Greek Agriculture: An Introduction, 1992, p 55.
17. McDonald, Biochemistry of Silage, p 9;
18. it may be worth noting that G Barker, Prehistoric Farming in Europe, 1985, p 48 denies that silage was made in the prehistoric period.
19. Martin J Sutton, Permanent and Temporary Pastures, 5th ed, 1895, p 122.
20. H I Moore, 'The conservation of grass', JRASE, 133, 1972, p 29.
21. James F W Johnston, 'On the feeding qualities of the natural and artificial grasses in different states of dryness', Trans Highland and Agricultural Soc, new ser, 9, 1843, pp 60-61.
22. M Toussaint-Samat, trans A Bell, A History of Food, 1992, pp 693 and 775;
23. Henry Woods, in his Ensilage: Its Origin, History and Practice, 1883, p 12, advances the same argument.
24. H I Moore, Silos and Silage, 2nd ed, 1950, p 10;
25. S J Watson and A M Smith, Silage, 1951, p 15;
26. Woods, Ensilage, p 12.
27. H M Jenkins, 'Report on the practice of ensilage, at home and abroad', JRASE, 2nd ser, 20, 1884, pp 129-37;
28. E S Bunting, 'History of the maize crop in N W Europe', in E S Bunting, ed, Production and Utilisation of the Maize Crop, Ely, 1980, pp 3-13.
29. Jenkins ('Practice of ensilage', p 136) points out that, ironically, it was a dry season which prompted French interest in ensilage, whereas 'the moving force with us has been a succession of wet seasons.'
30. The first silo in the USA appears to have been built in 1873, at Spring Grove, Illinois, by Fred L Hatch, who had read a translation of Vilmorin-Andrieux's paper while a student at the University of Illinois. However, Goffart's book was perhaps more influential, because it was translated and published in 1879 by Mr J B Brown, president of the New York Plow Co, and mailed to hundreds of his customers in the USA as an advertisement for his firm. See Lyman Carrier, 'The history of the silo', Jnl American Society of Agronomy, nd, c 1920, p 181;
31. United States Department of Agriculture, Yearbook, 1899, Washington, 1900, p 617;
32. Anon, The First Vertical Silo, American Society of Agricultural Engineers, 1969. I am indebted to Dr Bowers for all of these sources.
33. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensilage', pp 137 and 207;
34. Moore, Silos and Silage, p 10;
35. at about the same time, M J Sutton claimed to have been 'the medium of first placing ensilage obtained from France before agriculturalists at the Smithfield Cattle Show': see Sutton, Permanent and Temporary Pastures, 3rd ed, 1886, p 108.
36. Although it is worth noting that Sutton (Permanent and Temporary Pastures, 5th ed, 1895, p 122) claimed that silage was made in Canada 'long before it became familiar to farmers in Great Britain'.
37. S Jonas, 'On straw chaff', JRASE, 2nd ser, 6, 1870, pp 119-21;
38. Jonas's career is outlined in R Brigden, Victorian Farms, Marlborough, 1986, pp 231-2.
39. J Wrightson, 'Report on the agriculture of the Austro-Hungarian Empire', JRASE, 2nd ser, 10, 1874, p 351;
40. according to Primrose McConnell, The Agricultural Notebook, 1st ed, 1883, p 120, 'Ensilage is a system of preserving hay or green fodder, originally introduced from Hungary.'
41. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensilage', pp 134 and 152.
42. E L Jones, Seasons and Prices: The Role of Weather in English Agricultural History, 1964, pp 173-6;
43. J M Stratton, Agricultural Records, AD 220-1968, 1969, pp 118-23.
44. From 1875 to 1883 the rainfall in June, July and August was above the 1915-50 average in every year except 1876, and in 1879 it was 186 per cent of the average, according to H H Lamb, Climate: Present, Past and Future, ii, 1977, P 623.
45. Woods, Ensilage, pp 28-9 and 37-9.
46. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensilage', pp 126-246;
47. N Goddard, Harvests of Change: The Royal Agricultural Society of England, 1838-1988, 1988, p 120.
48. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensilage', pp 142, 164-5, 197, 231.
49. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensilage' Ibid, pp 232-46.
50. A Voelcker, 'On the chemistry of ensilage', JRASE. 2nd ser, 20, 1884, pp 482-504.
51. McConnell, Agricultural Notebook, p 120;
52. W Fream, Elements of Agriculture, 3rd ed, 1892, pp 227-31;
53. E von Wolff, trans H H Cousins, Farm Foods: or, The Rational Feeding of Farm Animals, 1895, pp 157-75.
54. H Kains-Jackson, 'Experiments in making ensilage during the wet season of 1888', JRASE, 2nd ser, 25, 1889, p 281
55. mentions a Practical Guide to Making Ensilage in Stacks and Silos, issued by the Ensilage Society and published by Eyre and Spottiswoode, price 6d.
56. BPP, 1884-5, XX, Return of the Evidence received by the Private Ensilage Commissioners: part 1, preliminary report and minutes of evidence, p iii.
57. Lawes first wrote to The Times and The Agricultural Gazette about silage in 1882, exhibiting no great enthusiasm for it, again in 1884 ('So long as the making of ensilage is confined to the wealthy, and to enthusiastic amateurs, no harm can be done...'), and in the season 1884-5 conducted a series of experiments on which he reported to The Agricultural Gazette: see G V Dyke, John Bennet Lawes: The Record of his Genius, Taunton, 1991, pp 239, 240, 248, 296, 326-7.
58. These reports were subsequently reprinted, with minor alterations, as a pamphlet (Sir J B Lawes and J H Gilbert, Experiments on Ensilage, conducted at Rothamsted, season 1884-5, 1886), which concluded, inter alia, that silage was 'a very good food' for milking cows and fattening oxen, but that the output per acre would be less than that of roots, and that the area under cleaning crops would be reduced, so reducing the area suitable for growing grain crops (pp 55-8).
59. BPP, 1884-5, LXXXIV, Return of the Replies to Questions relating to Silos and Ensilage, put by the Agricultural Department, Privy Council Office, to persons who have silos in Great Britain; with their Observations thereon, pp 295 et seq.
60. Not that the commission was overloaded with practical farmers, although among its members were the agricultural writer Faunce de Laune, James Howard, who originally suggested the production of the Jenkins report, the silage enthusiasts Henry Kains-Jackson and Stanhope Tollemache, and Lords Drogheda and Egerton, landowners.
61. BPP, 1886, XIX, Final Report of the Private Ensilage Commissioners, p 345.
62. The Judges, 'The silo and silage-stack competition, 1885-6', JRASE, 2nd ser, 22, 1886, pp 259-311.
63. See the references in Table 1 (note a).
64. Wrightson, 'Agricultural lessons', pp 285-6.
65. The sources of the statistics are given in Table 1 (note a). I am most grateful to Ms Kate Templeton for her help with the production of these figures.
66. BPP, 1889, LXXXIII, Agricultural Statistics, pp 88-9.
67. The weight of a cubic foot of silage depends upon its composition (ie whether it is made from grass, grass and legumes, cereals and legumes, maize, or arable by-products such as cereals), moisture content, and degree of compaction, which increases as the depth of the silo and the effective weight applied to it increases. Thus A Amos, 'The silage content of tower silos and silage clamps', JRASE, 84, 1923, pp 50-60, found that for silage made from oats and tares, material with a high dry-matter content (37.4 per cent) taken from the top of a silo weighed 20.7 lbs per cubic foot, whereas material with a lower dry-matter content (27.5 per cent) taken from 20 feet from the top of a silo weighed 56.7 lbs per cubic foot. Having considered various types of silage made in several different years, he concluded that for a fairly typical moisture content of about 30 per cent, for both tower silos and clamps, a figure of 40 lbs per cubic foot could be used for converting a volume of silage to a weight.
68. The same figure was given for grass silage in McConnell, Agricultural Notebook, 12th ed, 1953, p 708, and it is the one used for the appropriate calculations in this paper. In his first edition McConnell equates 4 tons of silage with one of hay (p 120).
69. MAFF, A Century of Agricultural Statistics, 1967, pp 118-23.
70. J A Voelcker, 'Annual report of the consulting chemist', JRASE, 2nd ser, XXI, 1885, p 337. Subsequent annual volumes contain similar reports, except for the volumes for 1890 and 1895. The 1891 volume contains 2 reports.
71. H I Moore, Grass and Grasslands, 1966, pp 108.
72. A Mutch, 'Rural society in Lancashire 1840-1914', Unpublished Manchester University PhD thesis, 1980, p 271.
73. R H B Jesse, A Survey cf the Agriculture of Sussex, Royal Agricultural Society of England, County Agricultural Surveys, No 2, 1960, p 125;
74. R P Wright, ed, The Standard Cyclopaedia of Modern Agriculture, V, nd, c 1910, p 59.
75. Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, p 125;
76. J Weller, History of the Farmstead, 1982, p 198;
77. Anon, 'Supply of silos by the Food Production Department', Jnl Board of Agriculture, 25, 1918, pp 149-52;
78. W B Mercer, A Survey of the Agriculture of Cheshire, Royal Agricultural Society of England, County Agricultural Surveys, No 4, 1963, p81;
79. H W Gardner, A Survey of the Agriculture of Hertfordshire, Royal Agricultural Society of England, County Agricultural Surveys, No 5, 1967, p 58.
80. Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present, 6th ed, 1961, p 453.
81. H C Pawson, Cockle Park Farm, 1960, p 174;
82. A J Hosier and F H Hosier, Hosier's Farming System, 1951, p 133.
83. See, for example, T B Wood and H E Woodman, 'The digestibility of oat and tare silage', J Ag Science, 11, 1921, pp 304-9;
84. A Amos and H E Woodman, 'A study of the process of making clamp silage', J Ag Science, 15, 1925, pp 444-54;
85. H E Woodman, 'The nutritive value of stack silage', J Ag Science, 15, 1925, pp 327-33;
86. A W Oldershaw, 'Crops for ensilage', JRASE, 84, 1923, pp 39-49;
87. H W Kersey and C S Orwin, 'The comparative cost of mangolds and silage', JRASE, 86, 1925, pp 48-58.
88. See, for example, S J Watson, 'The conservation of grassland herbage', JRASE, 95, 1934, pp 103-16;
89. S J Watson, idem, 'The chemical composition of grass silage', J Ag Science, 27, 1937, pp 1-42;
90. S J Watson, idem, Silage and Crop Preservation, 1938.
91. H I Moore, Ploughing for Pasture, 1944, p 28.
92. H E Woodman and Arthur Amos, Ensilage, Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Bulletin No 37, 6th ed, July 1944.
93. The first edition of this work, which was published in 1926, was based on a series of articles in the Journal of the Ministry written by Amos and Woodman, who, as footnote 48 indicates, were among the leading research workers on silage at that time: Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, p 125;
94. Watson, Silage and Crop Preservation, p 140;
95. F H Garner, 'Recent developments in silage making', JRASE, 103, 1942, p 164;
96. W Godden, 'The feeding of livestock', JRASE, 106, 1945, p 48.
97. George Henderson, The Farming Ladder, 1944, p 154.
98. Eric Rea, 'Silage for self-sufficiency', JRASE, 110, 1949, pp 28-9.
99. The capital cost of towers was thought to be too great for them to be given equal emphasis. I am grateful to Mr Victor Burke, of Rattery, Devon, who was employed by a War Ag in 1947-8, for this information.
100. Gardner, Agriculture of Hertfordshire, p 57;
101. Rex Paterson, How We Make Silage, 1950;
102. Q Seddon, The Silent Revolution, 1989, p 27.
103. M McG Cooper, Competitive Farming, 1956, p 35. Cooper was professor of agriculture first at Wye College and then at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
104. The programme's objectives were 10 per cent education, 15 per cent information, and the rest entertainment. I am grateful to Godfrey Baseley, the first producer of The Archers, for this information. See also S Laing, 'Images of the rural in popular culture', in B Short, ed, The English Rural Community: Image and Analysis, 1992, p 145.
105. BPP, 1958/9, VIII, Report of the Committee on Grassland Utilisation (the Caine Committee), p 321. The figures are given on pp 55-6 in the original pagination of the report.
106. Anon, The Farmer and Stockbreeder Grassland Handbook, 1957, pp 265-9; BPP, 1958/9, VIII, p 36.
107. BPP, 1958/9, VIII, pp 48-62.
108. J Bradley, Co-operation: A Report on an Experiment in setting up co-operative Groups for the Purpose of making grass Silage, University of Bristol, Report no 125, Newton Abbot, 1961, pp 1 and 38-9. I am most grateful to Mr Geoffrey Hearnden of Bridford for providing this reference for me and discussing the project.
109. V H Beynon, Grassland Management: An Economic Study in Devon, University of Exeter, Department of Economics (Agricultural Economics) Report No 138, 1963, p 6.
110. Mercer, Agriculture of Cheshire, pp 81-2.
111. C Higgs, 'The agriculture of Warwickshire', JRASE, 123, 1962, pp 73-4;
112. Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, pp 125-6.
113. Gardner, Agriculture of Hertfordshire, p 59.
114. W Harwood Long, A Survey of the Agriculture of Yorkshire, Royal Agricultural Society of England, County Agricultural Surveys, No 6, 1969, p 140.
115. J T Coppock, An Agricultural Atlas of England and Wales, 1976, p 117.
116. H F Marks, ed D K Britton, A Hundred Years of British Food and Farming: A Statistical Survey, 1989, p 197.
117. M McG Cooper and D W Morris, Grass Farming, Ipswich, 3rd ed, 1973, p 159
118. M McG Cooper and D W Morris, Grass Farming, 5th ed, 1983, p 169.
119. Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, p 197; see Table 1.
120. Kains-Jackson, 'Experiments in making ensilage', p 281.
121. P McConnell, 'Experiences of a Scotsman on the Essex clays', JRASE, 3rd ser, 2, 1891, p 321.
122. H I Moore, 'Silage on the farm: experience and experiment', JRASE, 116, 1955, p 60.
123. P McConnell, The Diary of a Working Farmer: being the True History of a Year's Farming in Essex, 1906, p 207.
124. B Hill and D Ray, Economics for Agriculture: Food, Farming and the Rural Economy, 1987, pp 284-93.
125. Martin J Sutton, Permanent and Temporary Pastures, 1886, p 109,
126. W H Jordan, director of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station, made the same point in The Feeding of Animals, New York, 1903, p 219,
127. as did Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex p 125;
128. Moore, Silos and Silage, p 13;
129. Bradley, Co-operation, p 38;
130. Cooper and Morris, Grass Farming, 3rd ed, 1973, p 159.
131. Arthur Court, Seedtime to Harvest: A Farmer's Life, Bradford on Avon, 1987, p 78;
132. in the 1880s Clare Sewell Read, 'Suggestions for stock-feeding in the winter of 1893-4', JRASE, 3rd ser, 4, 1893, p 469, passed all his silage through the chaff-cutter with straw, and then added shredded roots and cake to it before feeding: an early version of complete-diet feeding perhaps?
133. Moore, Silos and Silage, p 13;
134. Higgs, 'Agriculture of Warwickshire', p 73;
135. Cooper and Morris, Grass Farming, 5th ed, 1983, p 169.
136. Moore, Silos and Silage, p 13.
137. Jenkins, 'Practice of ensuage', p 238.
138. Wright, Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture, p 60.
139. Kersey and Orwin, 'Cost of mangolds and silage', pp 53-5;
140. Halley and Soffe, Agricultural Notebook, p 374.
141. Watson and Smith, Silage p 138;
142. Moore, 'Silage on the farm', p 62;
143. Beynon, Grassland Management, p 10;
144. John Nix, Farm Management Pocketbook, 4th ed, Wye, 1971, p 71.
145. The Judges, 'The silo', p 306;
146. even Clare Sewell Read ('Suggestions for stock feeding', p 469) felt that he could not afford a silo, and so made silage in a stack.
147. see footnote 24 above.
148. Watson and Smith, Silage, p 17;
149. Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, p 125;
150. Moore, 'Silage on the farm', 60.
151. Wright, Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture, p 60;
152. Bradley, Co-operation, pp 38-9:
153. am grateful to Geoffrey Hearnden of Bridford, one of the farmers involved in this experiment, for supplying me with this reference, and for pointing out that it is easier to make silage in large quantities than in small. The same point is made in Mercer, Agriculture of Cheshire, p 83.
154. Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, p 125;
155. Seddon, The Silent Revolution, pp 28-31.
156. Moore, Grass and Grasslands, p 108;
157. Watson and Smith, Silage, p 16;
158. by 1944, according to C Culpin, Farm Machinery, 2nd ed, 1944, p 221, there were a million silos in the USA.
159. G Fry, Sweet Ensilage, 1885.
160. McDonald, Biochemistry of Silage, p 11;
161. T B Franklin, British Grasslands, 1953, p 162;
162. Watson and Smith, Silage, p 15.
163. BPP, 1958/9, VIII, pp 53, 57.
164. Mercer, Agriculture of Cheshire, p 83.
165. Lawes and Gilbert, Experiments on Ensilage, p 55;
166. Kersey and Orwin, 'Cost of mangolds and silage', p 53.
167. Franklin, British Grasslands, p 162.
168. S G Kendall, Farming Memoirs of a West Country Yeoman, 1944, p 170;
169. Franklin, British Grasslands, p 161;
170. E H Whetham, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, VIII, 1914-1939, 1978, p 277;
171. E T Halnan and F H Garner, The Principles and Practice of Feeding Farm Animals, 1944, p 134;
172. J A Hanley, ed, Progressive Farming, 1949, pp 80-81.
173. Watson and Smith, Silage, p 17;
174. Cooper and Morris, Grass Farming, 5th ed, 1983, p 169;
175. Whetham, Agrarian History, p 289;
176. Court, Seedtime to Harvest, p 28;
177. Moore, 'Silage on the farm', p 61;
178. Seddon, The Silent Revolution, p 36;
179. F Raymond, G Shepperson and R Waltham, Forage Conservation and Feeding, Ipswich, 1975, p 16.
180. Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, pp 158-62.
181. Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, Ibid, p 142.
182. Numbers of farm workers are taken from Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, p 138.
183. The decrease in the number of farm workers was seen, at the time, as a reason for the adoption of silage in the 1920s: 'Ensilage not only compares favourably with root-growing in labour costs, but...facilitates the destruction of weeds, partly because these are smothered under the dense foliage and subsequently cut and ensiled before their seeds are shed, and partly because the crop is cleared from the field in early summer, and the land consequently can be broken up in hot weather by steam or tractor and the perennial weeds quickly destroyed' (H Hunter, ed, Bailliere's Encyclopaedia of Scientific Agriculture, 1931, p 284).
184. Moore, 'Silage on the farm', p 60, makes the same point.
185. H Kornberg, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. Seventh Report: Agriculture and Pollution, Cmnd 7644, 1979, p 10. The figures given are for sales of pesticides by UK manufacturers for home and export use, all at 1976 values, and they show an increase in herbicide sales from about £10 million in 1958 to about £80 million in 1976. However, no figures are quoted for consumption within the UK only (the problems of finding such data are discussed on p 9 of the report), although it is stated that roughly half of all pesticides were sold at home in 1976. The MAFF Annual Review of Agriculture gives no separate figures for expenditure on pesticides before 1983 (prior to that they were included with veterinary and electricity costs and rates) and no separate figures for herbicides at all.
186. Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, p 198;
187. MAFF, A Century of Agricultural Statistics, pp 118-19.
188. Figures for the years up to 1945 are for Great Britain, and are taken from MAFF, A Century of Agricultural Statistics, pp 120-21.
189. From 1946 the figures are for UK production and are taken from Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, p 197.
190. Moore, Silos and Silage, pp 12-13.
191. Seddon, The Silent Revolution, pp 25-7 contains a vivid account of the problems of haymaking;
192. F E Alder et al, The Farmer and Stockbreeder Grassland Handbook, 1957, pp 106-39 is a good account of the state of the haymaker's art in the late 1950s.
193. McConnell, Diary of a Working Farmer, p 217.
194. Kornberg, Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, pp 13-15; I am grateful to Dr John Brockman for pointing out the extent of the yield response.
195. Tetraploid ryegrasses first appeared on the NIAB recommended list in 1964: see National Institute of Agricultural Botany, Varieties of Ryegrass, Farmers Leaflet No 16, Cambridge, 1964, pp 4-7. I am very grateful to my colleague David Barnard for this point, and to him and Dr John Kirk for discussing the effects of tetraploid ryegrasses.
196. MAFF, Agricultural Statistics, United Kingdom, 1962, p 22.
197. These figures are taken from the indices of prices of medium fuel oil or gas oil fuel given in the annual volumes of the Annual Abstract of Statistics for the years 1964 to 1983, deflated by the Retail Price Index series (1985 = 100) given in A Burrell, B Hill and J Medland, Agrifacts, 1990, p 148. At its lowest, in 1970, the oil price index in real terms stood at 510.2; by 1974 it was 836.1; in 1980, 1179.3; and in 1983, 1492.3. In current price terms (ie not adjusting for inflation) the changes were much greater, nearly trebling between 1970 and 1975, and increasing by 13 times between 1970 and 1983.
198. Raymond, Shepperson and Waltham, Forage Conservation and Feeding, pp 16-17;
199. the reasons for the increases in world prices in the early 1970s are discussed in S Harris, The World Commodity Scene and the Common Agricultural Policy, Wye, 1975.
200. The prices charted in Figure 5 are for dairy compound feeds, listed in the 1971, 1975, 1983 and 1989 editions of Federation of United Kingdom Milk Marketing Boards, UK Dairy Facts and Figures. In constant price terms, compound feed prices in 1973 and 1974 increased to levels not experienced since the mid-1950s, although by 1982 they had again fallen to their 1972 level.
201. See Table 25.12 in Marks and Britton, British Food and Farming, p 251.
202. H I Moore, The Science and Practice of Grassland Farming, 1949, p 112.
203. Watson, Silage and Crop Preservation, pp 131-2;
204. Cooper and Morris, Grass Farming, 5th ed, 1983, p 169.
205. Moore, Science and Practice of Grass Farming, pp 112-13.
206. Charles Crowther, 'The feeding of livestock', JRASE, 96, 1935, p 332.
207. Moore, 'Silage on the farm' p 65;
208. Culpin, Farm Machinery, 10th ed, 1981, p 180;
209. the various categories of additive are classified and described in Halley and Soffe, Agricultural Notebook, pp 199-200; this also describes a system (known as the Liscombe Star System) for deciding whether or not an additive is needed under various circumstances of grass variety, growth stage, nitrogen level, weather, degree of wilting and chopping: it is clear from this that even with good weather Victorian silage makers would have made better silage if additives had been available.
210. Halnan and Garner, Principles and Practice of Feeding Farm Animals, p 136;
211. according to Moore ('The conservation of grass', p 30) the wire mesh silos were difficult to fill, sometimes collapsed, and could only be regarded as a wartime expedient.
212. John Cherrington, On the Smell of an Oily Rag: My Fifty Years in Farming, 1979, p 132;
213. Cherrington was not the only enthusiast: it was 'one of the most valuable developments in modern grassland farming', according to M McG Cooper, Competitive Farming, 1956, p 29,
214. 'The greatest innovation in connection with silage making' for Jesse, Agriculture of Sussex, p 125.
215. Hosier and Hosier, Hosier's Farming System, p 134.
216. In fact. Hosier's hay-sweep was a simpler version of the horse-drawn sweep rake which Primrose McConnell claimed to have introduced from the United States of America in the 1890s: see P McConnell, The Complete Farmer, 1911, p 385.
217. Cherrington, On the Smell of an Oily Rag, p 132;
218. Cooper, Competitive Farming, p 29;
219. Paterson, How We Make Silage.
220. Culpin, Farm Machinery, 2nd ed, 1944, p 226,
221. Culpin, Farm Machinery, 5th ed, 1957, p 283;
222. Moore, Science and Practice of Grassland Farming, p 117;
223. Bradley, Cooperation, p 38;
224. Higgs, 'Agriculture of Warwickshire', p 76.
225. I am grateful to my colleague Derek Shepherd, and to Chris Evans of the Agricultural Engineers' Association Ltd for obtaining these figures.
226. Federation of United Kingdom Milk Marketing Boards, UK Dairy Facts and Figures (annual), various editions.
227. Cooper and Morris (Grass Farming, 5th ed, 1983, p 169) credit Rex Paterson with the invention of self-feed soon after 1950.
228. It was discussed as an experimental method in Frank Henderson, Making Mechanised Farming Pay, Ipswich, 1954,
229. as a method under trial in 1955 in Moore, 'Silage on the farm', p 66.
230. Arthur Court (Seedtime to Harvest, p 78), who was perhaps more typical of the ordinary farmer, mentions its adoption in 'about 1960',
231. Mercer, Agriculture of Cheshire, p 83 suggests its rapid adoption during the years 1960-63.
232. Data from MAFF, UK Agricultural Statistics, 1974;
233. for an illustration of the mechanisms see Weller, History of the Farmstead, pp 59 and 198.
234. C P van Zeller, 'Vacuum compression silage', Agriculture, 72, 1965, pp 219-21.
235. C P van Zeller, Agriculture, Ibid, p 220.
236. Seddon, The Silent Revolution, pp 29-32;
237. Anon, 'Polythene sheeting', Agriculture, 70, 1963, p 43; I am most grateful to my colleagues John Brockman and John Usher for making me aware, from their own personal experience, of the importance of polythene sheeting.
238. P L Redman, 'Big bale silage', JRASE, 144, 1983, pp 113-18;
239. Culpin, Farm Machinery, 12th ed, 1992, p 192.
240. This point is discussed in greater detail in the sections written by the author of this article for E J T Collins, ed, The Agrarian History of England and Wales, VII, 1850-1914, forthcoming.
241. There are perhaps some interesting comparisons to be made between the delayed adoption of silage and the pattern of adoption of fertilizers in Britain and high-yielding rice varieties in southeast Asia. Inorganic nitrogenous fertilizers were available in the nineteenth century, but their use expanded most rapidly after the 19505, when shorter-strawed cereal varieties became available, which were capable of withstanding high nitrogen applications without lodging, and output expansion did not, thanks to price support, produce falling prices. Similarly van der Eng explains that the delay in the adoption of high-yielding rice varieties was the result of several inter-dependent factors: see P van der Eng, 'Development of seed-fertilizer technology in Indonesian rice agriculture', Ag Hist, 68, 1994, pp 20-53.