ABSTRACT
The agricultural landlord and tenant system in England and Wales is the result of two centuries of evolution. This chapter suggest that this evolution has been based primarily on the continued recognition of the relative power implicit in the landlord/tenant relationship in agriculture. It shows that the reforms and their rhetorically-claimed "success" are based on a wilful misreading of the empirical context of the agricultural landlord/tenant relationship. During the early and mid-1980s, agriculture generally was facing a period of falling incomes, with growing pessimism over future incomes within the context of European agricultural reform. As a consequence individual reforms of the law, such as those occurring in the Agricultural Holdings Acts of 1948 and 1984, or the Agricultural Tenancies Act 1995, need to be viewed within the context of the empirical development of both land and agricultural policy. Agriculture is an increasingly capital-demanding industry, with financiers requiring collateral and track-records.
