[f. FARM v.2 + -ING1.] The action of the vb. FARM.
1. The action or system of farming (out) or letting out to farm (the revenue, etc.).
1591. Percivall, Sp. Dict., Arrendamiento, letting, ferming.
1672. Petty, Pol. Anat., 360. This and other practices of farming, taken with the whole doctrine of defalcations, hath been a great trade in Ireland, but a calamity on the people.
1786. Burke, W. Hastings, Wks. XII. 121. The farming out of the defence of a country to a contractor, being wholly unprecedented, and evidently absurd, could have no real object but to enrich the contractor at the Company’s expense.
1845. M’Culloch, Taxation, Introd. (1852), 31. Still less can we concur with Bentham, who has endeavoured to show that farming is in every case the preferable mode of collection.
1877. Dowden, Shaks. Prim., vi. 88. His upstart favourites, his blank charters, his farming of the realm, are so many blows pointed at the life of his country.
2. The business of cultivating land, raising stock, etc.; agriculture, husbandry.
1733. W. Ellis (title), Chiltern and Vale Farming explained.
1767. A. Young, Farmer’s Lett. People, 294. When I am told that farming answers to gentlemen, who I know do not give the farmer’s attention to the business, I never believe it.
1819. Edin. Rev., XXXII., Oct., 464. A capital of 200 quarters, expended on what is called high farming, will not raise from this field a return of 240 quarters.
1878. Jevons, Prim. Pol. Econ., 90. As agriculture becomes more a science, farming will require greater skill, and larger capital, and the English mode of land tenure will probably spread.
3. attrib. and Comb. Simple attributive (sense 1), as farming-system; (sense 2), as farming-country, -interest, -land, -life, -operation, -plan, -regulation; farming-office = farm-office; farming-stock, the live stock and produce of a farm.
a. 1764. Lloyd, Spirit Contradiction, Poet. Wks. 1774, II. 144.
| Friend Jerkin had an income clear, | |
| And rented, on the farming plan, | |
| Grounds at much greater sums per ann. |
1776. Adam Smith, W. N., I. xi. (1869), I. 152. The ordinary profits of farming-stock in the neighbourhood.
1792. A. Young, Trav. France, 131. A very … commodious house, with farming-offices, on the most ample and solid scale.
1799. Morning Post, in Spirit Publ. Jrnls. (1800), III. 10. Any bye-laws or farming-regulations.
1828–40. Tytler, Hist. Scot. (1864), I. 240, note. In the farming operations of ploughing and harrowing, in the leading of hay, the carting of peats, or taking in the corn during the harvest, the wain driven by oxen appears to have been principally employed, while the conveyance of the agricultural produce to any great distance was performed by horse-labour.
1845. M’Culloch, Taxation, II. iv. (1852), 202. The farming interest was far more depressed after the peace.
1872. Raymond, Statist. Mines & Mining, 287. In California the placer-mining operations have been ruinous to large areas of farming and garden land, along the rivers below the mining ground.
