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54
iii. rural husbandry.
most läns, barley is the only kind of cereal that can be cultivated with any
great degree of probability of a harvest of ripe grain. As a grain for
bread-stuffs, barley has been replaced chiefly by rye which, at the beginning of the
19th century, was comparable as regards the total amount of the crop with
barley, but which, at the close of the century, yielded about twice the amount of
the last-named cereal; the cultivation of rye, however, has not increased in the
same proportion as the cultivation of cereals as a whole; while, on the other
hand, wheat, especially during the last few decades, has had an ever-increasing
proportion of the cultivated land devoted to its growth, although it still occupies
the last place amongst the four kinds of cereals, both as regards area and the
share it bears in the entire cereal crop of the country.
The increase of the cereal crops depends, above all, on the vigorous advance
of oat-growing. After having in earlier times been cultivated practically
exclusively on temporarily ploughed meadow-land, this kind of grain has come
to occupy an ever-increasing share of the cultivated land of the country and,
at the present time, is grown on little less than half the total grain-producing
area of the kingdom and yields almost as large a harvest as the other three
above-mentioned cereals together, apart from the circumstance that, as a rule, it
forms by far the greater proportion of the meslin, which, during the last few
decades, has been cultivated to an ever-increasing extent.
Of lesser importance as regards the area under cultivation and the value of
the harvest are the various kinds of leguminous plants (peas, beans, and vetches),
and buck-wheat, which last-named grain has been cultivated on a gradually
diminishing scale in the same proportion that agriculture in Sweden has
improved, so that it is only grown now in the poorest sandy soils of Skåne, and that
only on a small scale.
The crops yielded by the different kinds of grain at various epochs is shown
by Tables 11 and 12, and, in accordance with the present division of the country
into läns, by Table 16. Taken as a whole, Sweden can be said to be divided
into three regions as regards the cultivation of grain. In Norrland, barley is
the principal cereal and that to a higher degree the farther north we go.
Central and Southern Sweden, on the other hand, can be divided into an eastern
half, where rye-culture is prominent, and a western half, where the cultivation
of oats is a still more distinguishing feature, the explanation of this phenomenon
being the differences in the soil and climate of the country (cf. pp. 35 foil.).
An idea of these conditions is given by the accompanying maps.
The increase in the production of cereals in Sweden has not only been
important in itself, but it has even risen in a greater proportion than the increase in
the population; during the century that has just come to an end, it is calculated,
as was shown above, that the cereal-harvest has been quadrupled, while the
number of the population has not more than doubled. But in spite of the fact that,
calculated per head of the population, the crops may thus be estimated to have
increased from 272 kg at the beginning of the 19th century to 475 kg at the
present day — of which amounts the grain used for bread-stuffs represent 93
and 143 kg respectively — the home-consumption has shown a still greater increase,
so that the demand for grain, at the present day, must to a considerable extent
be supplied by means of importation. This development has passed through the
following phases. In early times Sweden, as a rule, existed on its own
harvests. During the 18th century, some hundreds of thousands of quintals of
barley and rye were usually imported every year, but, during the latter part of
the century and at the beginning of the 19th century, a still larger amount of grain
was probably employed for the manufacture of spirits. From the decade 1820—30
the crops of bread-grains (rye, wheat, and barley) produced in the country were
sufficient most years to supply the home demand for grain, and there soon came
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