Industy, agriculture and transport in the United Kingdom of Great Britain

2.3.Arable farming

Arable farming is the production of crops. Crop growth is affected by light, soil, nutrients, water, air, and climate. Crops commonly grown in the United Kingdom include cereals, chiefly wheat, oats and barley; root vegetables, chiefly potatoes and sugar beet; pulse crops such as beans or peas; forage crops such as cabbages, vetches, rape and kale; fruit, particularly apples and pears; and hay for animal feed.

Since the Second World War, scientific and technical progress and the removal of tenancy-based restrictions on choice of crop have given British arable farmers a great deal more freedom to plan cropping sequences. Strict crop rotation is no longer technically necessary or even financially desirable. Factors that influence crop sequences include the soil type, weather, the price and availability of labour and power, market outlets, and technical considerations about maintaining soil fertility and crop health. For example, some vigorous crops such as kale or arable silage will, when liberally fertilised, tend to outgrow and smother weeds. Many pests and diseases are crop-specific and the more often a particular crop is taken, the greater the buildup of pests and diseases that attack it. The farmer will therefore try to design a sequence to sustain high yields, permit adequate weed control, service market needs, and keep the soil free from diseases and pests.

2.4.Pastoral farming

Pastoral farming is the breeding of livestock for meat, wool, eggs and milk, and historically (in the UK) for labour. Livestock products are the main element of the UK's agricultural output. The most common meat animals in the United Kingdom are cattle, pigs, sheep and poultry. Overwhelmingly, British wool comes from sheep, with only a few goats or alpacas bred for exotic wools such as cashmere or angora. The vast majority of milk comes from cattle, and eggs from chickens.

Most British farm animals are bred for a particular purpose, so for example, there is a sharp division between cattle bred for the beef trade—early-maturing cattle are best to increase yield, and those that store fat marbled within the muscle rather than as layers outside are preferred for the flavour—and those bred for dairy, where animals with a high milk yield are strongly preferred. Nevertheless, because dairy cattle must calve to produce milk, much of the British beef output is from surplus dairy herd calves.

-Cattle farming

There are about 17,000 dairy farms in the UK, largely in the west. Average herd size is 86 cows in England, 75 in Wales and 102 in Scotland.

 

 

Pic.7.Jersey cattle

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cows require significant areas of grassland to raise. Dairy cows need 0.4 to 0.5 hectares per cow, including the area needed for winter silage; suckler beef cows can need up to a whole hectare each. The UK produces very little veal, and UK law requires that animals are kept in daylight in groups with bedding and access to hay, silage or straw.

-Sheep farming

Over 41,000 farms in the UK produce sheep, but more than half of breeding ewes are on hill or upland farms suitable for little else. National Parks and heather moors such as the Lake District, the Pennines and Snowdonia in Wales are dominated by sheep farms, as are the Scottish Highlands. In the lowlands, pockets of sheep farms remain. Romney Marsh (which gave its name to the Romney sheep) and The Downs in Kent are famous for their sheep.

Nowadays many ewes are housed indoors for lambing, which costs more but facilitates earlier lambing with lower mortality and replacement rates. It also rests and protects the grassland, leading to better early growth and higher stocking rates. Sheep are also important in helping to manage the landscape. Their trampling hinders bracken spread and prevents heather moor from reverting to scrub woodland. Wool production is no longer important in the UK, and nowadays, sheared fleeces are often treated as a waste product.

-Pig farming

 

Pic.8.Large black pigs

 

 

 

 

 

About 4,600 farms produce pigs, and the UK is 90% self-sufficient in pork, but only about 40% self-sufficient in bacon and ham, which reflects a traditional British preference for these cuts. Nowadays many pig farms in the UK breed intensively-farmed hybrids of types like the large white, British Landrace, Welsh or British Saddleback, and formerly-popular breeds like the Cumberland and small white are extinct. Wild Boar are sometimes farmed. They are presently covered under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act 1976 and farmers need permission from their local authority to keep them.

-Other livestock

The UK has about 73,000 goats, mostly as milk producers; this number is relatively small by EU standards. Venison production in the UK is mainly from red deer, with a few fallow deer as well, but there are only about 300 venison-producing farms. As noted above, there are about 26,500 farms with chickens. However, more than half the UK's eggs come from fewer than 400 flocks, mostly with more than 50,000 birds each. Other livestock farmed on a smaller scale includes game birds, ducks, geese, turkeys, ostriches, rabbits and hares.

^{3.TRANSPORT IN THE UK}

Transport in the United Kingdom is facilitated with road, air, rail, and water networks. Urban rail networks exist in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff, Belfast, Leeds and Liverpool. Heathrow Airport is the world's second busiest international airport, and the UK also has a network of ports.

3.1.Air transport

 

Pic.8.Terminal 5 at London Heathrow Airport, which is the world's busiest airport by international passenger traffic.

 

 

There are 471 airports and airfields in the UK, of which 334 are paved. There are also 11 heliports.

BAA is the UK's largest airport operator, its flagship being London Heathrow Airport, the largest traffic volume international airport in the world and is the world's busiest airports. Gatwick Airport, the second largest, is owned by Global Infrastructure Partners and was previously owned by BAA. The third largest is Manchester Airport, in Manchester, which is run by Manchester Airport Group, which also owns various other airports.

Other major airports include London Stansted Airport in Essex, about 30 miles (48 km) north of London and Birmingham Airport, in Solihull.

Outside England, Cardiff Airport, Edinburgh Airport and Belfast International Airport, are the busiest airports serving Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland respectively.

The largest airline in the UK is EasyJet. Others include British Airways, BMI, Bmibaby, Flybe, Jet2, Thomson Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

3.2.Railways

The rail network in the United Kingdom consists of two independent parts, that of Northern Ireland and that of Great Britain. Since 1994, the latter has been connected to mainland Europe via the Channel Tunnel. The network of Northern Ireland is connected to that of the Republic of Ireland. The National Rail network of 10,072 miles (16,209 km) in Great Britain and 189 route miles (303 route km) in Northern Ireland carries over 18,000 passenger trains and 1,000 freight trains daily. Urban rail networks are also well developed in London and several other cities. There were once over 30,000 miles (48,000 km) of rail network in the U.K., however most of this was reduced over a time period from 1955 to 1975, much of it after a report by a government advisor Richard Beeching in the mid 1960s.

3.3.Roads

The road network in Great Britain, in 2006, consists of 12,226 km of trunk roads, 38,085 km of principal roads (including 55 km of motorway), 114,657 km of "B" and "C" roads, and 233,383 km of unclassified roads (mainly local streets and access roads) — totalling 398,350 km.

Road is the most popular method of transportation in the UK, carrying over 90% of motorised passenger travel and 65% of domestic freight. The major motorways and trunk roads, many of which are dual carriageway, form the trunk network which links all cities and major towns, these carry about one third of the nation's traffic, and occupy about 0.16% of its land area.

The Highways Agency (an Executive Agency of the Department for Transport) is responsible for maintaining motorways and trunk roads in England. Other English roads are maintained by local authorities. In Scotland and Wales roads are the responsibility of Transport Scotland, an Executive Agency of the Scottish Government, and the Welsh Assembly Government respectively.^[15] Northern Ireland's roads are overseen by the Roads Service Northern Ireland, a section of the Department for Regional Development. In London, Transport for London is responsible for all trunk roads and other major roads, which are part of the Transport for London Road Network.

Toll roads are rare in the United Kingdom, though there are many toll bridges such as the Severn crossing. Road traffic congestion has been identified as a key concern for the future prosperity of the UK, and policies and measures are being investigated and developed by the government to ameliorate its effects. In 2005, the Government published proposals for a UK wide road pricing scheme. This was designed to be revenue neutral with other motoring taxes to be reduced to compensate. The plans have been extremely controversial with 1.8 million people signing a petition against them.

Driving is on the left. The maximum speed limit is 70 miles per hour (112 km/h) on motorways and dual carriageways.

 

REFERENCES

 

1. www.cia.gov (August 2007)
2. wikipedia.org