The crops chiefly cultivated are oats, barley, turnips and potatoes. Wheat is not grown except now and again in an odd field. The climate is too cold, the autumn heat never rising to the point of ripening that crop satisfactorily. Oats is the most frequent crop, and Aberdeenshire is the oat-producing county of Scotland. A fifth of the whole acreage under this crop in Scotland belongs to Aberdeenshire. Perth, which is next, has only one-third of the Aberdeenshire oat-area. Twenty thousand acres are devoted to barley, only one-tenth of the barley-area in Scotland. Over seven thousand acres go to potatoes; the southern counties have a soil better adapted to produce good potatoes; Forfar, Fife, Perth and Ayrshire excel in this respect and all these give a larger acreage to this crop. As regards turnips, however, Aberdeenshire is easily first. Being a great cattle rearing and cattle feeding district, it demands a large tonnage of turnip food. It is estimated that a million and a half tons of turnips are consumed every year in the county.
As regards cattle and horses the county has first place in Scotland. In 1909 there were 204,490 agricultural horses in the country and of these 31,592 were in Aberdeenshire, while of 1,176,165 cattle it had 168,091. It has a quarter of a million sheep, but here it falls behind other counties, notably Argyll, which has nearly a million, or one-seventh of all the sheep in Scotland.
Aberdeenshire is a county of small holdings. No other county has so many tenants. Over five thousand of these farm from five to 50 acres, while there are nearly four thousand who farm areas ranging from 50 to 300. This is part of the secret of its success. Earlier, the number of small farms was greater, the tendency being in the direction of throwing several smaller holdings together to make a large farm.
The industry has been a progressive one. Up to the Union in 1707 tillage was of the most primitive kind. Sheep-farming for the sake of exporting the wool had been the rule, but the Union stopped that branch of commerce. Later on, about the middle of the eighteenth century, the droving of lean cattle into England was a means of profit. Meantime the system of cultivation was of the rudest. A few acres round the steading, called the infield, were cropped year after year with little manuring, while the area beyond, called the outfield, was only cropped occasionally. There was no drainage and enclosures were unknown. Improvement came from the south. Sir Archibald Grant of Monymusk and Mr Alexander Udny of Udny were pioneers of better things; they brought labourers and overseers from the Lothians and the south of England, to educate the people in new methods of culture. At first a landlord’s, it by and by became a farmer’s battle; and ultimately in the nineteenth century it was the farmers who did the reclaiming. But the landlords set a good example by sowing grasses and turnips.
Near Aberdeen, a boulder-strewn wilderness was converted into fertile fields. The town feued the lands and the feuars cleared away the stones, which they sold and shipped to London for paving purposes; the process of clearing cost as much as £100 an acre, a fourth of this being recovered by the sale of the stones. This is typical of what was done elsewhere. Gradually the bleak moors were absorbed. A famine in 1782 opened the eyes of all concerned. Hitherto there was not as much as 200 acres in turnips. Hitherto also the heavy work-oxen, ten or twelve of them dragging a primitive and shallow plough, at a slow pace and in a serpentine furrow, had been imported from the south. Now they began to be bred on the spot. By and by cattle grew in numbers; by and by, two horses superseded the team of oxen in the plough.
But the chief factor in evolving Aberdeenshire into a cattle-rearing and beef-producing county was the turnip. Till turnips began to be grown in a large acreage, no provision was possible for the cattle in winter. Hence the beasts had to be disposed of in autumn. In 1820, as many as 12,000 animals were sent in droves to England. The advent of steam navigation in 1827 ended the droving. Then began the trade in fat cattle, but it was years before the county gained its laurels as the chief purveyor of “prime Scots” and the roast beef of Old England. The turnip held the key of the position; but turnips will not grow well without manure. The canal between Aberdeen and Inverurie carried great quantities of crushed bones and guano to raise this important crop.
Aberdeen-Angus Bull
Cattle-breeding began with McCombie of Tillyfour and the Cruickshanks of Sittyton, one with the native black-polled cattle—the Aberdeen-Angus—and the others with shorthorns. By dint of careful selection, great progress was made in improving not only the symmetry of the beasts but their size and beefy qualities. There began a furore for cattle-rearing and prizes taken at Smithfield made Aberdeen famous. Railway transit came in as an additional help, and to-day the Christmas market never fails to give its top prices for Aberdeenshire beef.
Every year the beef of 60,000 cattle leaves the county for the southern markets, chiefly London; this in addition to supplying local needs, and Aberdeen has now 162,000 of a population. Cattle-rearing and cattle-feeding are therefore at the backbone of Aberdeenshire agriculture.