- GIANNlivr FOUNDATION OF' AGRICULT6i3A4. ECONOMICS L-1134 11X UNIVERSITY OF ,B_RISTO t --AUGI A1958 DEPARTMENT OF ECONO ICS (Agricultural Economics) Selected Papers in Agricultural Economics Vol. V. No. 4. Some Economic Aspects of the Sheep Industg in the West of England Report No. 3 Arable Sheep in Lowland Mixed Farming Areas of Somerset and Herefordshire, 19ç4- by R. R. JEFFERY Price ss. od. Some Economic Aspects of the Sheep Industry in the West of England Report No. 3 Arable Sheep in Lowland Mixed Farming Areas of Somerset and Herefordshire, I9s4.-s• by R. R. JEFFERY March, 1958 - ' Introduction SINCE 1947 the number of sheep maintained on farms in England and Wales has shown a steady increase year by year, although total numbers in 1957 were still 11 per cent below the 1939 level: for Wales alone total sheep numbers were nearly 2 per cent higher in 1957 than in 1939, but for England they were nearly 16 per cent lower. Between different areas of the country however the recovery in sheep stocks has been very uneven. Taking the five West of England counties included in the Bristol I Province (Worcester, Hereford, Gloucester, Wiltshire and Somerset) total sheep were 13 per cent lower in 1957 than in 1939, but when the counties are considered separately, the range is from 14 per cent above the pre-war level in Hereford to 59 per cent below in Wiltshire. This steady expansion in sheep numbers in the country as a whole was not interrupted in any way by de-rationing of meat and decontrol of fatstock marketing which occurred during the summer of 1954, although these developments certainly confronted fat sheep and cattle producers with radically altered economic circumstances. In fact, following decontrol the fatstock and meat markets were thrown into a state of considerable confusion. Some such confusion was inevitable following a long period of control, but the position was exacerbated by a number of factors, the chief of which was probably the fact that the type of fat animal which had been encouraged by the Ministry of Food price schedules was com- pletely out-of-line with .consumer's preferences revealed by the free market, preferences that also showed considerable changes compared with pre-war. A further complication was the erratic arrival of meat supplies from abroad and, due to a measure of equalisation of prices by butchers, movements of price levels bore little relationship to the supply position. There was in fact, following de-control, a "honeymoon" period between butcher and fatstock producer in which the price of fatstock, especially fat cattle, was bid up to a quite uneconomic level during the winter of 1954-5, the losses incurred by butchers on home-produced beef being offset by increases in the retail price of pork and imported beef and mutton. The artificially high price level for home-produced beef misled summer graziers into the belief that beef prices, 119 following decontrol, had been established at a much higher level, and bidding for store cattle at the spring sales was carried out on this assumption. However, with the inevitable ending of the "honeymoon" period, prices of fat cattle fell sharply during the summer and autumn, leaving many graziers with a price per head for their fat cattle little, if any, higher than that paid for the stores in the spring. This situation was aggravated by the operation of a scheme for deficiency pay- ments, based on a twelve-month "rolling average" principle, which was described by one exasperated grazier as "the brain storm of a demented Whitehall genius". It seems probable that this scheme for deficiency payments was, in point of fact, more sinned against than sinning being, along with the summer grazier, a casualty of the unfortunate "honeymoon" period, an episode which added very considerably to the inevitable confusion in the fatstock market, and delayed the emergence of a more settled pattern of relative demand and price levels for different types and qualities of meat. As far as sheep producers were concerned the first intimation that important changes in the economic circumstances affecting this enterprise had arisen as a result of decontrol came with the store lamb sales in the late summer of 1954. At these sales farmers seeking store lambs for winter feeding found them- selves in active competition with butchers for lambs which during the control period would have been regarded as for- ward stores. Confirmation that under free market conditions consumers' preference, and with it producers' prices, would be markedly different from those under control came when root-fed hoggets appeared on the fatstock markets. It then became only too clear that the very heavy fat hogget, en- couraged by Ministry of Food price schedules and forced upon the consumer by meat rationing, had bred a marked antipathy among the public for carcase fat in any form. The price realised by the heavy-weight hogget in the winter of 1954-5 was some £2 to £3 per head less than during the previous winter, and winter sheep feeders, who had bid for store lambs at the beginning of the winter-feeding period on the assumption that fat sheep prices under decontrol would not differ greatly from control prices in the previous winter, were left to carry substantial losses. Public distaste for fat meat had killed overnight the economic basis of the practice of carrying hoggs on roots for extended periods during the winter months and selling out at heavy weights in late winter and early spring, a system of manage- 120 ment that under the Ministry of Food was not only profitable, but fitted in very well with the system of sheep farming prac- tised on many mixed farms. The heavy price discrimination against over-weight sheep had also made much more uncertain the future for the system under which hoggs were carried through the winter on roots and sold out the following summer as fat sheep off grass after shearing, although the high price for fleece wool may still make this practice a feasible proposi- tion for some long-wooled breeds of sheep. A further feature that soon became apparent was that the price for ewe mutton was very considerably lower on the free market, a factor which had an immediate and substantial impact upon the cost of flock maintenance, while those fat lamb producers who were not concerned with the problems of root-fed sheep were given food for thought by the discovery that on the free market second grade New Zealand lamb was making a higher price per lb. than first grade. The investigation with which this report deals is concerned with arable sheep flocks, and covers the period from the autumn of 1954 to the autumn of 1955; it thus coincided with the period in which changes in the economic circumstances arising from decontrol were becoming manifest, but during which the system of sheep management was still basically that which had proved profitable under control. This com- bination of pre-control systems of management and post- control economic circumstances proved particularly un- fortunate for winter root-fed sheep, but affected the breeding flocks to a much lesser degree. 121 The Sample The investigation deals with arable sheep flocks maintained in the lowland mixed farming areas of Somerset and Hereford- shire, i.e. it relates to sheep flocks in which some, or all of the sheep maintained are folded over arable crops, on farms where crops and livestock are combined in an integrated system of husbandry. The extent and duration of folding and the type of sheep employed varies considerably between groups. All farms maintain a breeding flock, and normally all lambs, apart from those kept for flock replacement pur- poses, are sold fat, either directly off the ewe, as weaned fat lambs off grass, or later in the year as root-fed lambs or hoggets. In a number of cases additional store lambs are bought in for winter feeding, a practice which however, is markedly more common among the Herefordshire farms. Complete results for a total of 70 farms and flocks were available for analysis from two main areas, the south and central lowland areas of Herefordshire, and the mixed farming areas of south and south-west Somerset. The Herefordshire flocks are divided into two groups, the Ross group consisting of 12 flocks on the light sandstone soils around Ross in the south of the county, and the Hereford group of 17 flocks situated mainly around the city of Hereford and to the west and south-west of it; this group also includes a few farms in a detached area in the Much Marcle district. The soil type in this group is predominantly medium loam, but approaches a heavy loam on some farms, especially to the north of Hereford and in the Marcle area. In Somerset, the mixed farming areas in which the arable type of sheep enterprise is found stretch in a belt along the , southern part of the county from Yeovil through South Petherton and Ilminster to Taunton, and thence westward into the Vale of Taunton Deane. Another area, to the north and west of this belt and separated from it by the Quantock Hills and the south-western extremity of the low-lying marsh- land of the Somerset Flats, runs from North Petherton, through Bridgwater, and along the lowland area between Bridgwater Bay and the Quantock and Brendon Hills to Dunster, with a southerly extension from Williton along the valley land between the two hill masses. 122 Soil types in these Somerset mixed farming areas are some- what variable both between areas and even with individual farm boundaries, but are mostly covered by a range from light sandy soil to medium loam.