It is very well known that milk records show a considerable downward trend in yield from the East to the West of England and Wales. The Bureau of Records of the Milk Marketing Board have produced some admirable maps, shaded by counties according to the average yield, and these bring out the trend very clearly ; roughly the yield declines from 730 to 630 gallons, a drop of 15 per cent. This trend in yield is not a new phenomenon. Twenty-five years ago Dr. Hammond and I found the same thing with 26 counties which by 1923 had had milk recording societies functioning for five years ; the decline was approximately from 700 to 600 gallons. We selected two societies which were at that time about at the extremes and extracted lactation figures from the milk record books of the members in an effort to probe a little deeper into the difference. I hope to refer to these two again and will only say now that Norfolk milk recorded cows gave 22.8 per cent, more milk than those of Penrith, and of this difference, 6 per cent, was due to higher yield at the start of the lactation and the rest to greater persistence of yield and to longer continued milk flow.

East Anglia has for long been one of the most important centres of pig production in Great Britain, and, if the county of Suffolk is taken by itself it had, in the period between the two wars, a higher concentration of pigs than any other. It is not, however, too easy to find a satisfactory historical account of the reasons which have led to this state of affairs, though some of the possible factors could be accounted for. In view of the extent to which the pig industry in different parts of the world has now become highly specialised one has to be careful to differentiate between factors affecting quality and quantity, for high quality is not the first historical factor.

All our breeds of sheep, as they exist to-day, are vastly different animals to their ancestors of 100 years ago. Most counties at that time, boasted a breed or type of their own ; but, after the inception of Breed Societies, these breeds were somewhat reduced, or at any rate absorbed by other breeds. At the same time it must be freely admitted that in no other country in the world are there so many different breeds of sheep as there are in the British Isles.

In the process of improving British sheep, two breeds, the Leicester and the Southdown, stand out quite clearly, and in most of our present-day recognised breeds, the Leicester or the Southdown have at some time or other played no small part in bringing about that improvement.

In this short paper it is proposed in the first instance to give a brief outline of the history of crop production, since it is closely related to stock production. This will be followed by an outline of the cattle in East Anglia, and finally with the possible developments in the future.

If one looks back into the cropping of the arable areas of this country, and in this case, East Anglia, one finds that in the earliest farming the rotations consisted of really a three course rotation—wheat or rye, followed in the second year, with barley, oats, peas or beans and in the third year, fallow. There was little provision for winter feed for livestock when such rotations were followed, and consequently large numbers of animals were killed annually in the autumn. About the middle of the sixteenth century, one finds the first mention of turnips for feeding to cattle in the winter, and this suggestion was quickly followed by the announcement that cabbages, carrots and parsnips were also grown for stock feed.

The Eastern Counties is an area extending from the Wash to the Thames; and includes Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Isle of Ely, Hertfordshire, Huntingdonshire, parts of Lincolnshire (Kesteven and Holland), Norfolk, East and West Suffolk, and Essex. It is well farmed, is largely arable (arable land 77.3%, pasture 19.5%, rough grazing 3.2% (1944)); and well suited to the production of abundant supplies of cereal grains which form the main basis of poultry diets. In addition, the soil types range from light sandy soils through alluvial and fen soils to heavy clay; from sandy heaths to low lying rich meadow and marsh land, and the climatic conditions are such as to suit poultry production. It is therefore not surprising to find poultry keeping in all its branches forming a profitable side line to the practice of general farming. The low lying meadow and marsh areas are particularly well suited to the rearing of ducks, on the lighter sandy soils numerous flocks of turkeys are kept, while throughout the area where suitable rough grazing exists small flocks of geese are reared. Fowls are also well distributed throughout the area on the better drained soils. The extent to which poultry are kept in the Eastern Counties can be appreciated by studying the census figures, no less than 17.7% of the fowls in England and Wales, 20.8% of the ducks, 12.6% of the geese, and 21.5% of the turkeys being reared in the Eastern Counties in 1948.