Agricultural Land Use Change in England and Wales, 1892-1992

The paper presents a method for transforming Agricultural Census data on land use from arbitrary administrative reporting units to a set of more environmentally meaningful land classes. The procedure is used to analyse historical patterns of land use in England and Wales. The results demonstrate that cropping patterns are related systematically to land capability and reveal the complex adjustments in the spatial distribution of land uses that have underlain changes in the overall cropping mix over the past century.