Dear Blogger
Apologies for the delay sending this install ment out, I have been putting together the monthly newsletter of the Shropshire Alternative Car Club.
The Village Home Front - FARMING
Back in 2005, Margot and Kate Gittins put together a fantastic display on Food and Farming for the Villagre Home Front exhibition, including baking several dishes from the recipes of the time,. Potatoes, cabbage and root vegetables seemed to be used in almost everything - because they were home grown and did not risk British sailors being lost when supply ships bringing food supplies from the US and Canada were attacked by enemy U-boats.
Before the war, farming had been through a period of acute depression, due to some extent to refrigeration. Ships could travel across the world and return with frozen meat and and refrigerated fruit and vegetables, and at a lower price than they could be produced in Britain. Thousands of acres were left to go wild and farm workers moved to find work in the towns.
Some research has revealed some interesting statistics which would not have been available during the war.
When, in the late 1930s, the government started to prepare for the inevitable war ahead, it was agricultural scientists, chemists and engineers who were about to change British agriculture out of all recognition. In came fertilizers pesticides and, where farms were largely still using the power of horses, factories changed to producing tractors and mechanised farm implements. In 1939 the government paid farmers £2 an acre to plough up pasture and start planting those potatoes, cabbage and root vegetables. The production of potatoes doubled and wheat increased by 2/3, bread and potatoes being the staple diet - it was estimated that 1/3 of the population fed on cheap white bread, some bacon, margerine and jam, and tea. The Ministry of Agriculture had the power to take posession of any land which was not being productive and farm workers were a reserved occupation and were forbidden by law to leave their jobs.
In 1939 649,000 horses worked on the land and in 1945 this was reduced to 545,000, but still a very large number. As the new tractors were being turned out, in 1939 there were 56,000, probably owned by go-ahead farmers and by 1946 there were 203,000, and they were moved around from farm to farm.
How ironic that the people starting to use these new machines to farm the land, would have been Land Army Girls!
