5. Facing competition from all sides, English agriculture was the victim of the opening up of the American Midwest, with the price of wheat halving and the amount of farmland decimated in the British Isles
The repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws in 1846 in Great Britain was supposed to usher in a period of free trade and, consequently, lower prices. However, due to the Crimean and American Civil War, in addition to technological advances, English agriculture instead experienced a golden age. Despite this, the opening of the American Midwest by the Homestead Act (1862) and the development of railways eventually opened European markets to a surplus of American crops during the 1870s. Cheap trans-Atlantic transport, dropping from 37 shillings per ton in 1880 to 14 shilling by 1884, overwhelmed complacent English farmers.
Coupled with poor harvests in the late 1870s, English agriculture entered into a depression. The price of wheat in Britain fell from 56 shillings a quarter in 1867-71 to just 27 shillings and threepence by 1894-98. Areas of land used for cereal equally declined, decreasing by approximately 22 percent, whilst the amount of wheat-growing land fell by almost half by the turn of the century. Precipitating a dramatic migration from rural to urban areas, English cities exploded in population as people packed in desperately seeking employment. It would not be until after the Second World War that British agriculture would reach comparable levels of production and profitability again.