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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 October 2008
Sugar beet occupies only a minor proportion of the total area of agricultural land in Britain, but it is of major importance to mixed cropping farms in the Eastern Counties of England, where soil and climate combine to give ideal growing conditions. This region produces more than half the annual United Kingdom output, and forms part of the major beet producing area in the European Community, which stretches from the Ile de France and Champagne-Ardenne in France, through southern Belgium to the western regions of the Netherlands. This paper is based on an extensive series of studies of beet production and reports on farming in the Eastern Counties of England, prepared since the mid-1920s by the Farm Economics Branch, and later by the Agricultural Economics Unit, of the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge. After sketching the historical background, it discusses some of the more significant developments – in crop husbandry, structural change, in the substitution of labour for capital and specialisation, and accession to the European Community – which took place in the four decades of unprecedented progress up to 1985.
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13. Agriculture Act, 1957.
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28. British Sugar Beet Review, 56; i (1988), p. 19.
29. On the other hand, rape was less suitable as a break crop in not allowing autumn weed control by cultivation, depended heavily on good weather in July and August, and was less complementary with labour requirements.
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36. Sturgess, Profitability, p. 20.
37. ibid.
38. 33.3 tonnes per hectare compared with 35.8 tonnes.
39. The net margin is the difference between total outputs and total costs. Gross margin is the value of output less variable costs - those which normally change proportionately with the size of an enterprise; for crops they include seeds, fertilisers, sprays, among others. Fixed costs are those incurred for the farm as a whole, such as labour, machinery and power, rent, and miscellaneous overheads.
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44. Oilseed rape average yields for the quinquennial 1977/78–1981/82 were 50 per cent higher than those in 1972/73–1976/77.
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48. Monetary compensatory payments meant that prices differed within the E.C., in some cases more than before its formation.
49. A further complication arose from the access to the U.K. market that cane-sugar producing Commonwealth countries enjoyed under the Commonwealth Sugar Agreement. The Sugar Protocol incorporated into the 1975 Lome Convention, gave certain African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries, including several in the Commonwealth, an open-ended commitment to guaranteed levy-entry free access for a given quantity (1.3 million tons of raw sugar) at a stipulated price within the price band paid to Community producers - a guarantee unique among EC trade concessions.
50. British Sugar Beet Review, 48: i (1981), 5.
51. British Sugar Beet Review, 53; iv (1985), 1.