Ploughing Up Postwar Britain

Prewar Britain was dependent on imported food; in 1938, 70 per cent of the cash value of the food consumed in Britain originated from overseas. For planners in the Ministry of Agriculture the solution was clear, and a campaign was launched to convert grassland to arable land. This resulted in the intensification of farming and heralded fundamental and far-reaching changes in the way the land was used.

Britain had a longstanding commitment to free trade which allowed agricultural produce such as cereals, meat, cheese, and butter to be imported. Following the emergence of overseas competition, leading to cheap imports, and poor harvests in the 1870s, the prevailing response was to switch from mixed farming to low-input methods of pastoral livestock production – ‘dog and stick farming’ – in England and Wales. By the 1930s the productivity of grassland, approximately one third of which was cut for hay each year, was, at best, stagnating. Faced with an abundant supply of low-priced imported feedstuffs there was little incentive to manage grassland.

This raised concerns in a number of official quarters. The most influential was George Stapledon, under whose energetic leadership the Welsh Plant Breeding Station at University College Wales (now Aberystwyth University) had become one of the most prestigious research establishments in the world. In 1938 Stapledon, in conjunction with William Davies, head of grassland agronomy, published a comprehensive survey of the grassland of England and Wales which showed that what they classified as first-rate grassland, containing 30 per cent or more perennial ryegrass, only accounted for 251,000 acres. This was less than 1.6 per cent of the total area of permanent pasture in England and Wales. In contrast more than 60 per cent of the total grassland was deemed to be fourth rate, dominated by Agrostis and other low yielding grasses. These species, because of their low nutrient value, were more suited to rearing cattle than fattening them.

The growing threat of another European war forced the government to devise measures to increase domestic food production. Arable land produced considerably more calories per acre than pastureland, so in 1939 they introduced a grant of £2 per acre to encourage farmers to plough up land that had been pasture and restore it to an arable rotation. According to Stapledon, the ‘£2 subsidy is going to make agricultural history in its implications and ultimate results’. It was, he suggested, ‘the most important decision … ever made by a Minister of Agriculture’. It acted as a very attractive financial incentive for farmers: it was twice the cost of the ploughing.

According to the official history compiled by K.A.H. Murray in 1954, the wartime food production campaign constituted an unqualified success story, which went far beyond the estimates of prewar planners. As the Ministry of Food noted in 1946: ‘By 1944 there had been compared with pre-war production, a 90 per cent increase in wheat, 87 per cent increase in potatoes, 45 per cent increase in vegetables and 19 per cent increase in sugar beet’. Within the space of a mere five years the area of arable land in England and Wales had increased from less than 12 million acres to more than 16 million – a transformation unparalleled in the annals of agrarian history. It established a pattern of high input, productivist farming which continued throughout the postwar period.

However, the wartime ploughing up campaign often resulted in the conversion of ecologically diverse pasture and wildflower meadows. When wildflower meadows vanish so do pollinators, as well as other insects and animals, such as hedgehogs, birds, and bats. As the Select Committee on National Expenditure rapidly concluded in 1941: ‘The system was … unscientific and conducive to error, if not to in-justice … land was ploughed which ought not to have been ploughed.’ They added: ‘The concentration on ploughing fresh land led to the neglect of measures for much needed improvement of existing arable and pasture.’

Yet, following the end of military hostilities in 1945, it was deemed imperative that state support for the agricultural sector should be continued. The destruction of the Second World War meant that by 1947 world food production was four per cent below its prewar levels, and Britain was in a financially precarious position. Imports were only 60 per cent of their prewar levels and exports had declined to 30 per cent, constrained by shipping shortages and the need to prioritise production for the home front. By the end of 1945 one quarter of the country’s prewar wealth had been liquidated to achieve victory.

The most significant postwar development was the 1947 Agriculture Act. Its declared objective was to promote the development of ‘stable and efficient’ agriculture via the provision of guaranteed prices and assured markets in order to once more increase output. The legislation committed the government to an annual price review for wheat, oats, barley, rye, potatoes, sugar beet, cattle, sheep, milk, eggs, and wool products, which accounted for an estimated 80 per cent of gross agricultural output. The price review, intended to ensure that prices could be realigned with increases in the cost of production, was to be conducted each February by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) in consultation with representatives of producers in the agricultural industry, namely the National Farmers Union. The system favoured producers at the expense of the consumers.

The benefits of this legislation were obvious for farmers in peacetime, who benefited from guaranteed prices for their produce. Yet it was not quite as generous as it might appear, and farmers were still expected to make efficiency and productivity improvements in the way they farmed. This framework of government support, in which farmers were rewarded for the amount of food they produced as opposed to the ecological and environmental impact of the way the land was managed, prevailed until Britain’s entry into the European Economic Community – and adoption of its common agricultural policy – in the 1970s.

The focus on productivist agriculture promoted the further conversion of grassland – including wildflower meadows – for arable cropping. Between 1945 and 1965 the volume of agricultural output increased on average by 2.8 per cent each year. By the early 1970s yields of arable crops had increased virtually threefold, allied to significant corresponding increases in livestock productivity.

The state directed food production campaign of the Second World War constitutes a pivotal point in the transformation of British farming. The wartime directives were a pragmatic response to the need to increase food production and immediate postwar food shortages led to the enshrinement of these policies, but with little attention devoted to the inherent contradictions between high input productivist farming and maintaining the diversity of flora and fauna. Since the Second World War Britain has lost 93 per cent of its wildflower meadows.

John Martin is Visiting Professor of Agrarian History at the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading.