In the 1930s, before the mechanisation of farming, plough teams were a familiar sight in rural Britain.
The inter-war years were difficult times for farmers and farm workers. When the wartime controls (of the Great War) were summarily removed after 1921, workers continued to consider themselves betrayed by the government.
WW1 governments had put in place a state regulated and subsidised system of agriculture that increased the pay of farm workers, the profits of farmers and the productivity of the land. The system continued after the war. Many tenant farmers took the opportunity of the early post-war boom to buy their farms from their landlords. The increase in Schedule tax on income from land was at a historically high level, which encouraged landowners to convert a highly taxed income into zero-tax capital gain. Nearly a quarter of agricultural land was sold by the end of 1922.
An oat shortage in 1920 meant that the high prices farmers could charge not only provided them with considerable profits, but also produced a bill of up to £15 million for the government as it subsidised the sale of oats to the public and food producers.
Repeal of the Agriculture Act
This system stayed in place until 1921, when the Agriculture Act - guaranteeing minimum wages and minimum produce prices - was repealed. The government was facing a potential £20 million subsidy bill for the agricultural sector, when other parts of the economy did not have such protection, and high food prices were not popular with a predominantly urban electorate.
The result was a rapid reduction in agricultural wages by as much as 40 per cent in one year, and the increased indebtedness of arable farmers. The removal of restrictions on Canadian grain was combined with reluctance by the government to intervene in the agricultural sector. These additional blows resulted in further falls in productivity, increased rural poverty, emigration to towns and some land lying waste, even in fertile areas such as Norfolk. Agriculture did not fully recover until WW2.
Consolidation and the return of subsidy
Minor recoveries in grain prices in the mid-1920s improved matters, but were cancelled out by the depression from 1931 onwards. Dairy farming did not suffer as badly, and some agricultural sub-sectors, such as eggs and cheese, moved to more efficient 'industrial' methods, particularly in Lancashire and Wiltshire.
The creation of marketing boards for various agricultural sub-sectors (such as milk and potatoes) in the mid 1930s helped to improve coordination, moderate prices, direct production and control imports. Also, the early 1930s saw tariffs reintroduced for a number of products such as wheat, soft fruit and potatoes, and farmers were quick to take advantage. By the late 1930s, the situation in the agricultural sector had improved from the difficulties of the early 1920s and early 1930s.
During World War I and the post-war reconstruction, the agriculture and food ministries controlled their respective industries. This culminated in the Agriculture Act (1920) which provided support for farmers in the form of guaranteed prices for agricultural products and minimum wages for farm labourers. But within six months of its implementation, falling prices and a struggling economy forced the repeal of the act, which returned the country to the laissez-faire economy that had existed before 1914, when there was a free market economy with little or no government involvement.
At this time, Labour and the Conservatives were united in their anti-subsidy approach, strongly believing agricultural issues should be solved in the open market.
These sentiments – which eventually led to a free market period lasting from 1921-1931 – are reflected in the policies of today. The 1920s Labour Party opposed state support to farmers while land was privately owned – today, Labour wants to move subsidies away from wealthy landowners.
In the 1930s the Conservatives stated: “It is no longer national policy to buy all over the world in the cheapest markets”. Their ambition today is to: “make a resounding success of our world-leading food and farming industry; producing more, selling more, and exporting more of our great British food”.
However, there were some significant downsides when the Agriculture Act was repealed: agricultural wages fell by as much as 40%. Productivity fell too, rural poverty increased, small farms failed and land was abandoned through urban migration. Some described the countryside as a desolate waste.
[And, by WWII and the Nazi blockade of Atlantic shipping, Britain was importing ~60% of its food ---- with predictable consequences for agriculture.]
Episode 30 - The War-Ags. Upon the outbreak of the Second World War, Agriculture Minister Reginald Dorman-Smith formed the County War Agricultural Executive Committees across England to oversee a plough-up campaign that would have to undo the 70 years of decline in Britain was to avoid being starved into submission. The War-Ags supported farmers with subsidies, machinery and scientific advice, but also enforced modern agricultural methods. Ploughing was non-negotiable, and those unwilling or incapable of rising to the task were evicted or dispossessed from their farms. George Stapledon's methods were imposed by the government, as Lord Lymington lamented the decline in the aristocracy's postion.
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Episode 31 - The 1941 National Farm Survey (pdf). To increase production the War Agricultural Executive Committees undertook a systematic survey of every land holding over 5 acres in England and Wales. With corresponding maps, the National Farm Survey provided the most comprehensive rendition of British land since the Domesday Book.
Scientists CS Orwin, Daniel Hall and George Stapledon (>) had been pushing for a comprehensive survey to plan agricultural reforms - proposals for land nationalisation, national parks and greenbelts were all informed by the information gathered by the War-Ags.
Sanderson had notions that if the mystical "lost secrets" of the English could be discovered, then the sort of society he envisioned could be created or as he saw it recreated. The "lost secrets" of the English that Sanderson sought were the "Secret of Memory" as opposed to the "paraphernalia of learning"; the "Secret of Race" as only Englishmen with good genes would have sex with Englishwomen of equally good genes; the "Secret of Government"; the "Secret of Power" which had been destroyed by "industrial ideals"; the "Secret of Organisation"; the "Secret of Property" (i.e. feudalism as a social system); and the "Secret of Economics" which had lost due to "moneyed interests".
In his pamphlet An Introduction to the English Mistery, Sanderson wrote that there were two types of "aliens", namely "the Dutch, Danes and other peoples of north-west Europe" vs. "some races on the other hand differ very widely from us both in character and tradition". Sanderson was described by all who knew him as a deeply unpleasant man with repulsive views such as his statement that people who became seriously ill did not deserve sympathy and that God only cared about the lives of rich people. The fact that Sanderson was a very small man whose own illness left him confided to a wheelchair did not stop him from preaching the doctrine that only the lives of healthy, attractive, and well off people mattered as he had no compassion for the poor and/or the sick.
... Sir Alfred Daniel Hall, KCBFRS, sometimes known as Sir Daniel Hall (22 June 1864 - 5 July 1942) was a British agricultural educator and researcher who founded Wye College. The founding staff included Herbert Henry Cousins, chemist, John Percival, botanist, Frank Braybrooke Smith, agriculturist, and F.V. Theobald, entomologist. Hall handled the teaching of chemistry. The college was formally opened in 1894 and had fourteen students. In 1902 Hall was persuaded to leave Wye and help rejuvenate research at the Rothamsted Laboratory. In 1912 he left Rothamsted to work with the Development Commission. In 1919 he became a director of the John Innes Horticultural Institution and was also a part-time advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1909 and made KCB in 1918.
When the County Executive Committees under the Food Production Department were abolished in 1919 they were replaced by the agricultural committees of the county councils. The Minister of Food could nominate up to one third of the membership of these committees. They had no powers of direction, but exercised all the limited agricultural powers of the county councils. They were abolished by the Agriculture Act 1947.
[WW2] During the war, contact between the ministry and the county committees was maintained through liaison officers, prominent local figures who represented groups of counties to the ministry. These appointments ended in 1945. Under regulation 49 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939 the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries was vested with powers for the purpose of materially increasing home food production in England and Wales. Certain of these powers were delegated by the Cultivation of Lands Order 1939 (SR & O 1939, no. 1078) and subsequent orders to the County War Agricultural Executive Committees which were appointed by the minister under regulation 66 of the Defence (General) Regulations, 1939. These powers were drawn in very wide and general terms which enabled the committees to take all necessary measures to ensure that the land in their area of responsibility was cultivated to the best advantage.
Under these powers the committees appointed many sub-committees, each of which was entrusted with a definite sphere of responsibility. This relieved the executive committees of the detailed work of carrying the programme into effect. Thus they were left free to consider overall policy matters while carrying out general supervision of the various sub-committees. The Cultivation of Lands Order did provide that proposals to take possession or to terminate the tenancy of any land other than by agreement required the minister's prior approval in writing.
In order that the work under the regulations and the minister's order could be carried out in the most efficient manner the counties were divided into convenient districts and district committees were established, without executive powers, to serve as the eyes and ears of the executive and sub-committees in regard to all matters of food production.
After the war, part V of the Agriculture Act 1947 provided for the establishment of County Agricultural Executive Committees for each administrative county, establishing the committees on a permanent basis, to concern themselves with the promotion of agricultural development and efficiency. As with the War Agricultural Executive Committees, the County Agricultural Executive Committees set up sub-committees to deal with different aspects of the work. District committees were also formed to give leadership in their areas on the general development of agriculture and horticulture. The act allowed the minister to delegate any of his functions relating to agriculture to the committees, and from 1947 the committees' staff became civil servants employed directly by the ministry. County Agricultural Executive Committees were abolished in 1971.
