ABSTRACT
According to official estimates for 1985 agriculture contributes about 2 per cent of UK GDP, its share of gross fixed capital formation is 2.1 per cent and it employs 2.6 per cent of ‘total civilian manpower engaged in all occupations’ (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, 1986a). These figures must be treated with some caution; although the GDP figure values output at market prices, these are artificially raised to levels far above world prices (see Section 1.4), and the employment figure is just over 2.2 per cent if manpower in agriculture is expressed as a percentage of civilian manpower including the unemployed. Even if the official figures exaggerating the importance of agriculture are accepted, this industry is exceptionally small in the UK compared with other industrialized countries: see Table 1.1. Agriculture in Industrialized Countries, 1982 https://www.niso.org/standards/z39-96/ns/oasis-exchange/table"> Share of GDP % (1) Share of labour %(2) Relative income https://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> 1 2 × 1 0 0 https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9780203013762/b0493ad3-36b6-4a1f-89c8-9b6b128bbcc8/content/pg_1_B.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/> Belgium 2.3 3.0 77 West Germany 2.2 5.5 40 France 4.2 8.2 51 Italy 5.8 12.4 47 Netherlands 4.3 5.0 86 United Kingdom 1.7 2.7 63 Sweden 2.8 5.6 50 USA 2.6 3.6 72 Japan 3.6 9.7 37 Source: Statistical Office of the European Communities, Eurostat Review, 1975–84.
