 Farm-based cheese production began to decline early in the century; in 1914 around 2,000 Cheshire farms still sold cheese, but this had fallen to 405 in 1939.In the mid-1920s, Cheshire cheese accounted for 30% of the non-imported domestic cheese market, second only to Cheddar, but competed poorly with imported cheese.In an attempt to improve its competitiveness with factory-made foreign cheeses, which were more uniform in quality, a grading scheme was introduced for Cheshire cheese towards the end of the 1920s; this voluntary scheme was superseded from the 1930s by various compulsory national grading schemes.