SCRI Annual Report 2003/2004 - Scottish Crop Research Institute

Director’s Report
malcontentment. In the 1820s, William Huskisson,
the then President of the Board of Trade, breached the
protectionist mercantile system by reducing duties in
several imports (e.g. coffee, sugar, cottons, woollens,
silk, iron etc.). In 1828, the Corn Law was modified
to permit grain to be imported at any time and fixing
duties on a sliding scale. Parliamentary reform characterised
the period 1830-1846, introducing important
social developments (abolition of slavery in the
colonies, the Factory Act, growth of trade-unionism,
new Poor Law etc.). In 1845-1846, there was considerable
agitation against the Corn Law, fostered by
Richard Cobden and John Bright, political leaders of
the Manchester School, building on the Manchester
Anti-Corn Law Association (1838) and Anti-Corn
Law League (1839). The ruin of the Irish potato crop
and the threat of famine were instrumental in gaining
the support of Robert Peel, leading in turn to the
Repeal of the Corn Laws on June 6 1846. By June 29
1846, the government led by Peel was overthrown by a
parliamentary revolt led by Benjamin Disraeli. In
1879, there was a severe agricultural depression arising
from the worst harvest of the century, a period associated
with a general economic downturn, several strikes,
the unpopular Afghan and Zulu wars, and problems
with Ireland. The remainder of the 19 th century, like
the rest of the century, was marked by growing internationalisation
of trade, and scientific and technological
achievement.
UK agriculture was transformed with enclosure (inclosure)
of ‘waste’ and common land. During 1702 to
1802, 577 Acts were passed for enclosing over 8 million
acres of such land. The First Report from the Select
Committee of The Honourable The House of Commons
Appointed to take into Consideration the Means of promoting
the Cultivation and Improvement of the Waste,
Uninclosed, and Unproductive Lands of the Kingdom, 1
January 1796 (price one shilling and replete with the
long s(ƒ)!) resolved that “the cultivation and improvement
of the waste lands and commons of the Kingdom
is one of the most important objects to which the
attention of Parliament can possible be directed, and
that the granting of a bounty to encourage the cultivation
of potatoes, in lands at present lying waste, uncultivated
or unproductive, would not only be the means
of augmenting, in a considerable degree, that valuable
article of food, but might also be the means of promoting
the improvement of extensive tracts of land, at present
of little value”. The Select Committee also
opined that “certain legal liabilities that stand in the
way of division and enclosure of waste lands should be
removed”. Reference was made to the idea of lands in
common was “derived from that barbarous state of
society, when men were strangers to any higher occupation
than those of hunters or shepherds, or had only
just tasted the advantages to be reaped from the cultivation
of the earth”. “Those who live in the neighbourhood
of great wastes are still an idle and lawless set
of people”, “that such commons are the frequent resort
of thieves and other depredators on the public”, “and
are on that account but particularly near the capital, a
public nuisance”. The Bishop of Llandaff stated “That
whilst there is an acre of such waste improveable land
in Great Britain, it may be hoped that when the
Legislature shall turn its attention to the subject, no
inhabitant of this island will be driven, by distress, to
seek a subsistence in Africa or America”. The report
estimated that there were 7,888,777 acres of uncultivated
land in England and 14,218,224 acres in
Scotland giving a total of 22,107,001 acres of waste
land, compared with 39,027,156 cultivated acres in
England, and 12,151,471 acres in Scotland. The
uncultivated area was regarded as a great source of
future national wealth. 2001-2002.
An Overview of Modern Agriculture The transfer
from a nomadic hunter-gather existence to one of systematic
and organised food and fibre production in
settlements of durable housing, with people in stable
social groupings deploying tools, keeping livestock,
and cultivating crops, is widely thought to have begun
about 9000-7000 BC in the Middle East, although
there is evidence of crop cultivation in 9000 BC in
northern Thailand, and in 7000 BC in northeast
Mexico. In terms of scale of operation, however, it is
clear from archaeological evidence that the development
of agricultural-dependent villages or settlements
was most pronounced in the Middle East, in Iraq in
about 6750 BC, in Greece in 6000 BC, and in Crete
at around the same date. As the journalist A. Browne
wrote in The Times in April 2003 during the war with
Iraq, civilisation was thought to have started in the fertile
plains between and around the Tigris and
Euphrates rivers. The Bible is replete with references
to early cities and sites that were built as a result of successful
agriculture. The plough, the wheel, the chariot,
picture-symbol records giving way to cuneiform and
then a syllabic alphabet for writing, literature, codes of
law, accountancy with double-entry book-keeping,
banking, astronomy, calendars, discovery of bronze,
and the formation of conscript armies all arose in an
area that was once the hub of the largest empire
mankind had created. By 3000 BC, agriculture had
reached Denmark and the British Isles, with genetic
adaptation having taken place in the main sources of
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