Walterp
Member
- Location
- Pembrokeshire
The Great War tested to destruction the longstanding British policy of allowing competition in markets increasingly dominated by overseas produce to set price levels.
Flanders, Verdun and the naval blockades stripped Europe bare not only of men and horses, but of imported food and materiel. In 1917 Britain introduced food rationing; civilians in central Europe starved; and Russian food riots ended up up-ending an entire State. And the German Army advanced, once more, to the gates of Paris.
Thus hunger and fear prompted British politicians to abandon the 'Cheap Food Policy‘ - the Corn Production Act 1917 guaranteed minimum prices up to 1922. Cash and confidence being essential farming prerequisites, the Act included a clause stating that four years' notice would be given if Parliament intended to abolish them.
Farmers borrowed to invest in their farms, whilst their wives and daughters put their hands to the plough, sometimes deep into the night. In 1918 the UK harvested the heaviest crops in living memory.
You know how this ends: food became more plentiful after the Armistice, prices started falling and - just as British farmers looked to their price guarantees to protect them from serious financial loss - the Agriculture Act was repealed, in spite of the clause about four years' notice.
When Adrian Bell began his farming career in Suffolk during 1920 he describes farmers at Bury St Edmunds mart (itself now long-gone) complaining about the falling prices; little did they realise, he added ruefully, that prices would continue declining and that, within a few years, most of the complainers would be driven into bankruptcy as the Great Slump of the 1920's gradually deepened into a Great Depression.
They called it 'The Great Betrayal', but the truth was more complex.
The Selborne Report 1918 designed an agricultural policy for the post-war years based on guaranteed prices, citing the value to the nation of a stable and efficient agriculture, less dependence upon imported food, a buoyant rural sector, wider employment, discouraging the "drift from the land" and the social solidarity of a land fit for heroes.
The problem was that many farmers turned out to be unenthusiastic about a national agricultural policy, if it meant accepting State control along with State support. The Selborne Report sketched a radical view of British agriculture that swept away short term tenancies, low wages and inadequate methods, and proposed instead long term tenancies, fixed rents, wages boards, national cropping plans, and powers to replace incompetent farmers with better ones.
This was the first truly comprehensive British agricultural policy, and it foundered upon farmers' reluctance to accept farm labourers sitting as their equals on committees to enforce decent wages, the reversal of the pre-war balance of power between employers and employed, a national plan for agricultural production, and the regular supervision of all farms and estates through permanent committees of the ablest farmers.
In truth, British farmers preferred to remain "practical men who practised the errors of their forefathers" rather than be eliminated in favour of young men with a scientific training and the ability to calculate their costs of production.
Their reluctance sank the first comprehensive proposal at a British agricultural policy, and deprived historians of a chance of seeing how a UK government might reconcile a well-paid rural workforce, higher profits for farmers, and food prices acceptable to the urban electorate in peacetime.
A hundred years later, we are still waiting.
Flanders, Verdun and the naval blockades stripped Europe bare not only of men and horses, but of imported food and materiel. In 1917 Britain introduced food rationing; civilians in central Europe starved; and Russian food riots ended up up-ending an entire State. And the German Army advanced, once more, to the gates of Paris.
Thus hunger and fear prompted British politicians to abandon the 'Cheap Food Policy‘ - the Corn Production Act 1917 guaranteed minimum prices up to 1922. Cash and confidence being essential farming prerequisites, the Act included a clause stating that four years' notice would be given if Parliament intended to abolish them.
Farmers borrowed to invest in their farms, whilst their wives and daughters put their hands to the plough, sometimes deep into the night. In 1918 the UK harvested the heaviest crops in living memory.
You know how this ends: food became more plentiful after the Armistice, prices started falling and - just as British farmers looked to their price guarantees to protect them from serious financial loss - the Agriculture Act was repealed, in spite of the clause about four years' notice.
When Adrian Bell began his farming career in Suffolk during 1920 he describes farmers at Bury St Edmunds mart (itself now long-gone) complaining about the falling prices; little did they realise, he added ruefully, that prices would continue declining and that, within a few years, most of the complainers would be driven into bankruptcy as the Great Slump of the 1920's gradually deepened into a Great Depression.
They called it 'The Great Betrayal', but the truth was more complex.
The Selborne Report 1918 designed an agricultural policy for the post-war years based on guaranteed prices, citing the value to the nation of a stable and efficient agriculture, less dependence upon imported food, a buoyant rural sector, wider employment, discouraging the "drift from the land" and the social solidarity of a land fit for heroes.
The problem was that many farmers turned out to be unenthusiastic about a national agricultural policy, if it meant accepting State control along with State support. The Selborne Report sketched a radical view of British agriculture that swept away short term tenancies, low wages and inadequate methods, and proposed instead long term tenancies, fixed rents, wages boards, national cropping plans, and powers to replace incompetent farmers with better ones.
This was the first truly comprehensive British agricultural policy, and it foundered upon farmers' reluctance to accept farm labourers sitting as their equals on committees to enforce decent wages, the reversal of the pre-war balance of power between employers and employed, a national plan for agricultural production, and the regular supervision of all farms and estates through permanent committees of the ablest farmers.
In truth, British farmers preferred to remain "practical men who practised the errors of their forefathers" rather than be eliminated in favour of young men with a scientific training and the ability to calculate their costs of production.
Their reluctance sank the first comprehensive proposal at a British agricultural policy, and deprived historians of a chance of seeing how a UK government might reconcile a well-paid rural workforce, higher profits for farmers, and food prices acceptable to the urban electorate in peacetime.
A hundred years later, we are still waiting.
