Agricultural History Review, Volume 37 Part 2 (1989), pp. 166–179

Agriculture in Ireland has had an unusual sequence of political contexts in the twentieth century in that it was at first under the single government of the United Kingdom, from partition of the island in 1922 it came under two separate sovereign states, and accession of both to the European Community in 1973 brought it again within a common policy framework. The effects of the changing political and economic circumstances together with other influences are investigated in this paper through analyses of the trends in farm enterprises and agricultural production in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The farm enterprises studied comprise tillage, cows, beef cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry. Trends in the structure and volume of agricultural production are considered, and more briefly those in inputs and incomes. The trends combined indicate clearly a sequence in which divergence occurred between the agricultures of the two territories, and this was succeeded by tendencies towards convergence. 

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