AGRICULTURE - THE WAR PERIOD The war struck across all these projects of quiet development, and its first effect was to sweep the agricultural colleges and re search institutes of all their students and younger staff for service in the new troops. For the first two years of the war farmers were told to get on with their business as usual but that they had no special part to play or contribution to make. Prices rose steadily but not abnormally, though here and there a special shortage would declare itself. It was towards the close of 1916, when the sub marine menace began to assume threatening dimensions and har vests both at home and in America were deficient, that the new government called upon the farmers to assume a share in the fight.
The Board of Agricul ture, under the presidency of Rowland Prothero (later raised to the peerage as Lord Ernle), set up early in 1917 a Food Production department directed by Sir Arthur Lee (later Lord Lee of Fareham) and county committees were constituted with cer tain powers of directing the crops to be grown by farmers. Little could be done to enlarge the area under crop in 1917, but rapid surveys were made of land and to each county was assigned an area of land to be put under the plough, as far as practicable in corn and potatoes. Power was also taken to enter upon land that was being inadequately cultivated ; services were organized to provide and distribute steam and tractor ploughs, horses and im plements ; labour was recruited from every possible source, includ ing interned persons and prisoners of war, and the women joined in large numbers and rendered devoted service, training centres being set up to make them and other unskilled labour serviceable on the land. The supply of seeds, fertilizers, feeding stuffs, and other necessities like binder twine was organized, and the necessary transport (now under control) and credits for purchases overseas were arranged. Late as came the effort it was prosecuted with great energy, and even in 1917 the area under the plough was increased by a quarter of a million acres, in addition to 7 20,00o ac. of arable grassland sown to crops. An increase of 6o,000 ac. of wheat, 150,00o ac. of barley, 620,00o ac. of oats and 260,00o ac. of potatoes was obtained in 1917 as compared with 1916.
Another section of the Food Production department promoted the cultivation in allotments of all the spare ground that could be found round the cities and towns, and saw to the supplies of seeds and tools. This movement (see ALLOTMENTS and SMALL HOLD INGS) was of no small value in mitigating the shortages of food which set in later ; it had a further result in awakening a desire among many of the urban dwellers for a plot of land Lo cultivate. The Allotment movement thus stimulated is still active to-day, difficult as it is to retain land near towns from the spread of building.
To assure the farmers of a re turn for the task imposed upon them the Corn Production Act (1917) was passed, which gave certain guarantees for the price of cereals for a term of six years. In effect these guarantees never were required, so rapidly did prices rise within a few months of the passing of the Act to a level then not contemplated. But other provisions of the Act touched the industry more closely. A mini mum wage for agricultural labourers was fixed, and a machinery of Wages Boards was set up to determine what the minimum should be from year to year in each district. Again the stated minimum was nugatory, so rapidly did the situation develop, and the Wages Boards became organizations to fix the actual wage rate, not the minimum. Landowners were debarred from raising rents in so far as such increases could be ascribed to the guaranteed prices; in deed the whole Act was framed as a permanent policy of assisting agriculture as well as to meet the existing emergency. The farmer was to receive a certain guarantee of price that would encourage him to produce; the State assumed this burden because it was the general interest of the community to ensure production from and employment upon the land. If the farmer was thus secured the labourer in his turn must be assured of a living wage ; the ex penditure of the State was not to go wholly into the farmer's pocket. The landowner again was not to divert the benefit intended for the producers, as he might otherwise do on the fundamental economic basis that rent represents the difference between the earning power of that land and of land on the margin of cultiva tion. The Act was directed to maintain and extend the area of cultivation, and whatever its defects, defects that are inherent in all such schemes of bounties or protection (namely, that they can not ensure a responsive effort on the part of the farmers nor avoid an unearned increment on land that was already profitable) it was the first coherent scheme that recognized the needs of all classes interested in the land.
The immediate interests of the farmers were, however, far more concerned with the course of prices. Early in 1917 definite shortages began to be manifest, attended by rapid upward rushes of price and speculation among dealers. The newly formed Ministry of Food was therefore forced to embark upon a course first of price fixing and then of rationing all the major articles of food. Such measures involved a very complete control of the whole machinery of distribution; prices had to be fixed for both consumer and producer, the middleman's allowances were determined, and the supplies had to be artificially directed to meet the requirements of each district. As far as farmers were con cerned, two main difficulties had to be met by the Food Controller. He had to effect a compromise between the high prices necessary to stimulate production and the low prices required by the con sumer, opposites that proved almost irreconcilable with regard to milk in the later years of Food Control. The fundamental problem of rationing was solved by leaving the consumption of bread un controlled and keeping its price down by a subsidy. Thus even the poorest could secure their main food supply, after which high prices might be allowed to check consumption of the supplemen tary articles of diet. The second difficulty lay in fixing the prices of much of the produce of the farmer on a reasonable parity, so that he would not be tempted to concentrate on the production of the most profitable. For example any cereal can be converted into milk or meat or eggs; butter or cheese might be more profitable than the raw milk. A shortage in cattle food was soon disclosed since so much of it had come from overseas while the carefully rationed ships' tonnage had to be reserved for essential human foodstuffs, soldiers and munition materials. Also the normal home production of cattle food was itself reduced because wheat was milled more deeply so as to produce 5 or 6% of poor offals instead of the 3o% before the war; hence the situation had to be faced when it might be necessary to reduce greatly the animal stock. Actually the milk herd of the country was not appreciably reduced, but sheep declined by one and a half millions between 1916 and 1918, and the pig herd, nearly two and a half millions in 1914, had fallen to 1,700,00o in 1918.
It cannot be said that the numerous regulations imposed by the Food Ministry and the Board of Agriculture in the critical years 1917-19 were wholeheartedly observed. Many of them ran counter to the traditions of the farmer, who apart from any question of profit could always see his own reason for following his accustomed routine. Thus the campaign for ploughing up grassland, which was the main item in the Board of Agriculture's programme, met with much obstruction and a somewhat grudging performance. All the instincts of the farmer were against breaking up a good pasture which was producing some food when undisturbed, whereas the crop he would get from it was problematical. The argument that even a bad corn crop could do far more to feed the people than the meat or milk which could be derived from the grass, carried little weight with the farmer who was uncertain of his labour supply, who feared wireworm and weeds, who thought of the time when he would have to put the land back to grass. Few farmers again would withhold grain from stock when stock were so profit able and little or none of their accustomed feeding stuffs were to be had.
During the latter part of 1917 and early 1918 the energy of the Food Production Department and its county committees found a real response, with the result that in 1918 as compared with 1916 the total arable land of the United Kingdom had been increased by 1,72o,000 ac. and the land under crops by nearly three million acres, the increase in wheat being three-quarters of a million acres, in oats over one and a half mil lion acres, and in potatoes nearly 400,000 acres. But the with drawal of more men from the land for active service in-the spring of 1918 and the disastrous harvest conditions that were unfortu nately experienced, so intensified the opposition to compulsory ploughing that no further progress could be made, indeed there were nearly half a million acres less grain in 1919 than in 1918. Happily the war had come to an end in November, 1918, or the consequences of this revolt against the ploughing up of grassland might have been a food shortage of the sternest kind.
At this stage, when the actual fighting was over but the crisis of food supplies still persisted, the temper of the farmers turned very strongly against control. They had become organized and by iteration of individual inconveniences every regulation became a general grievance. It is the evil of all price fixing that the pro ducers are almost perforce driven to base their case upon the per formance of their weakest members; hence follows either inordi nate profits for the more efficient or restriction of supplies.
The consequence of the war, which from the farmers' point of view may be regarded as persisting until near the end of 192o, for there was little relaxa tion in the operations of the food controller until then, was a great temporary prosperity for the farmers. Even though, checked by the regulations of the food controller, the British farmer always had to sell his wheat at less than the world price, that is, at less than foreign corn was being bought for distribution in the United Kingdom, and though the cost of labour and prices had risen to a high level and commodities rose also, rent had not varied and the balance was strongly in his favour. He had also enjoyed the benefit of the lag which affects all farming operations—that much of the expenditure incurred in preparing a crop antedates the sale by many months; hence on a rising market some at least of the costs are incurred on a lower scale than the realization, this being particularly true of labour. While the largest sums of money were earned on farms growing potatoes and vegetables, probably the highest rate of profit was on the purely grazing farms selling sheep and wool, young stock and milk, and employing little labour. But the only men who really kept their profits were those who gave up their farms and sold their stock before the end of 192o.
The most immediate effect of these profits was a sharp rise in land values. During the period 1918-21 there were immense sales of agricultural land amounting on a conservative estimate to three million ac. in England and Wales. About one-eighth of the farming area of the country changed hands in these years at greatly enhanced values. Landowners were not able to raise rents though their disbursements for tithe, repairs and taxation had in creased; farms being in demand, it was evident that they could treble or even quadruple their net incomes from land by selling it and investing the proceeds in Government Stocks. Tenants were anxious to retain their holdings but had to buy in order to do so. Consequently these years saw the creation on a fairly large scale of an owner-occupier class of farmer. Some of these men had already made money enough to pay for their farms or were able to do so while prices were high; they were comparatively safe when the crash in values came in 1921. The men who then found themselves in difficulties were those who had bought their farms on borrowed money and still carried the mortgage; still more those who had entered and stocked their farms in the period of high prices.
Considering the production of the country we have already seen that the advance in the arable and particularly in the corn area attained in 1918 was not maintained even in the years of high prices that persisted until 1921. All powers of dictating culti vation were abandoned at the close of the war. As regards live stock the size of the milk herd was maintained, though the beef herd suffered a small decline. The sheep flock of Great Britain, of England in particular, was greatly diminished ; in England and Wales it stood at about seventeen and a half million at the begin ning of the war, had fallen to sixteen and a half million in 1918 and reached its lowest point, 13,383,000 head in 1921, while analysis of the returns shows that the loss had fallen almost en tirely upon the sheep of the arable counties. Arable sheep farm ing had always been a special British feature characteristic of the open country upon the chalk and the sands. There half the arable land used to be farmed with fodder crops—rye, winter barley, tares, rape, kale, turnips and swedes, which were sown so as to afford a succession of green crops upon which the sheep were closely penned in folds that were moved day by day on to fresh ground. In addition to their green food the sheep and lambs re ceived a little hay and corn and cake to force them on for market at an early stage; the land received the benefit of the manure made from the food and the treading of the sheep. This system, the sheet anchor of the older light land farming, was unsuited to war and post-war conditions. The labour required, both for the fold and the growing of the fodder crops, was too expensive at the new rates of wage, the supplementary feeding stuffs were un obtainable, and prices tempted the farmer to sell all his flock and put the land into corn. Again fixed prices ignore quality; the arable sheep farmer could no longer realize the extra price he had been accustomed to obtain for his quickly-grown lambs. Conse quently the great arable sheep areas in Hants, Wilts and similar counties lost up to 5o% of their sheep and though numbers have been reviving of late years the restocking has been with grass breeds like the Cheviot-Border, Leicester half-breeds, Exmoors, Kerry Hills, etc., to the permanent loss of the Down breeds, like Hampshires, Oxford Downs and Southdowns.
The stock of pigs suffered great reductions with the shortage of feeding stuffs in 1917, 1918 and 1919. The herd which in England and Wales had remained for many years at about two million fell to 1,7oo,000 in 19r8, but has since recovered rapidly to more than its previous level, reaching indeed three and a quarter million in 1923. The numbers of poultry followed much the same course as that of pigs and from the same causes, but the post-war devel opment has been more marked with the rapid extension of the knowledge of skilled poultry management.
