§ 53. Mr. Hurdasked the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food what percentage of farm land was occupied under the landlord and tenant system in 1914, 1939 and at the latest convenient date.
§ Mr. John HareThe first year in which a sufficiently reliable number of occupiers supplied information on tenure in their agricultural returns was 1927. Results for earlier years was based on an inadequate response and clearly overestimated the percentage of land rented, perhaps by as much as ten per cent.
When the earlier statistics of tenure are adjusted for this reason, it would appear that at least four-fifths of the acreage of crops and grass in England and Wales was occupied under the landlord and tenant system in 1914, and this percentage fell to about two-thirds of the acreage of crops and grass during the inter-war period. The latest information available is that derived from the 1950 World Agricultural Census, which showed that approximately 62 per cent. of the area of farm land (including rough grazing, woodlands, etc.) was occupied under the landlord-tenant system.