§ Mr. Russell Johnstonasked the Secretary of State for Scotland how many agricultural holdings, listing crofts separately, there were in Scotland in each of the years 1945 to 1966; and how many people were employed in agriculture in Scotland in each of those years.
§ Mr. RossThe table below sets out (i) the number of agricultural units making returns at each June census from 1945 to 1966; (ii) the number of crofts recognised by the Crofters Commission from 1956 to 1966; (iii) the number of employed workers (full-time, part-time and casual) returned at each June census from 1945 to 1966.
Since 1956, farmers have been encouraged to make only one return when they have two or more holdings to run as a single unit. This has accentuated the decline in the number of units. Estimates are available of the number of working units in 1947 and 1956 when there were 64,000 and 63,000, respectively.
No information on the number of crofts prior to 1956 is available. The 278W numbers given for subsequent years are numbers of registered crofts rather than numbers of working units, and so are not directly comparable with the total numbers of agricultural units in the first column. It is estimated, for example, that in 1966 there were 4,000 fewer working units on crofting land than there were registered crofts.
Number of Agricultural Units (including crofts) Number of Crofts Number of Workers 1945 … 75,716 Not available 117,004 1946 … 75,324 " 115,228 1947 … 74,878 " 114,740 1948 … 74,726 " 108,647 1949 … 74,873 " 106,697 1950 … 74,792 " 105,127 1951 … 74,606 " 104,100 1952 … 74,444 " 102,278 1953 … 73,980 " 96,371 1954 … 73,590 " 97,360 1955 … 73,026 " 92,984 1956 … 72,175 18,586 90,329 1957 … 70,749 19,824 89,501 1958 … 65,948 19,966 88,421 1959 … 61,911 19,800 84,679 1960 … 61,308 19,734 82,626 1961 … 61,750 19,585 82,169 1962 … 60,953 19,500 76,243 1963 … 60,444 19,339 72,872 1964 … 58,258 19,193 68,436 1965 … 56,835 19,038 63,761 1966 … 56,344 18,932 58,295