British Farm Surveys 1941 to 1943 The National Farm Survey of England and Wales and the Agricultural Survey in Scotland Introduction: the British farm surveys, 1941-43* Governments do exceptional things in wartime. One of the lessons of the First World War was that Britain was vulnerable to the blockade of its Atlantic trade, and for that reason food imports could not be guaranteed. Nor was the transport of animal feedstuffs a good use of shipping in wartime. When war broke out again in 1939 the lessons of the First World War were acted on. The management of agriculture, which had been achieved late in the war, was re-introduced on the outbreak of renewed hostilities. The prompt institution of food rationing was another lesson learnt. The need to reduce dependency on imports a third. Deliberate steps were taken to shift agriculture onto a new footing to make the country more nearly self-sufficient: this meant a new concentration on grains and potatoes. Less importance was attached to either milk or meat production. The instrument by which this was to be achieved were the 61 County War Agricultural Executive Committees (CWAECs), again modelled on the arrangements which had emerged by the end of the previous war. The CWAECs would translate instructions from Westminster into practical action on the ground.1 In 1940 the CWAECs conducted a survey of farming. In 1941 the government launched a more comprehensive survey of individual farms, which has come to be known as the National Farm Survey. It is aspects of this which concern us here. In Scotland matters were arranged a little differently and, until a recent publication by Brian Short, had remained largely unexplored.2 Agriculture had been devolved to the Scottish Board of Agriculture from 1911. In 1939 a reorganization of the government institutions in Scotland resulted in the powers of the Board being transferred to a department of the newly created Scottish Office. The writ of the Westminster government did not immediately run over the Scottish countryside. That said, the Scots established 39 county committees, ‘Agricultural Executive Committees’ or AECs, along the lines used in England and Wales, to manage wartime production. These were perhaps not called county committees because some counties were divided between committees and others joined under a single committee. They did not have the full powers of the CWAECs south of the border, some powers being retained centrally. However, the Scots set their face against an individual farm survey, holding that it would soon become out of date and was too great a call on limited staff and resources. Instead a sample survey was instituted with somewhat different preoccupations to the National Farm Survey in England and Wales. The report on the Agricultural Survey in Scotland is published in full for the first time in this volume from a copy in the National Archives.3 Maps of Scottish holdings, which served to give both boundary information and land use information, were made later in the war but under the terms of the Town and County Planning Acts of 1932 and 1943.4 I The idea of a national farm survey was not a new one. The Ministry of Agriculture had considered the issue in 1938 and again in 1939 and prepared a long memorandum outlining its position: http://www.listandindexsociety.org.uk/BritishFarmSurveys.pdf
George Odlum, The Ministry of Agriculture and ‘Farmer Hudson’ by John Martin Abstract The direction of farming by the County War Agricultural Executive Committees in the Second World War, coupled with the dissemination of more progressive and productive methods of farming, has been widely hailed as an unqualified success story. This article evaluates the validity of this assertion by focusing on a case study of Manor Farm, Manningford, Wiltshire. From 1926 it was owned by George Odlum, a specialist dairy farmer, nationally and internationally acclaimed for his ‘Manningford’ herd of pedigree Friesians. In 1942 his farm was privately sold to R. S. Hudson, the Minister of Agriculture, who was, according to the local agriculture committee, treated as ‘Farmer Hudson’. Following press comment that the farm was in ‘poor condition’ prior to its sale, Odlum embarked upon a lengthy campaign to clear his name which culminated in a libel trial in 1946. The evidence presented at the trial provides a detailed insight into the way a progressive farm was managed during the war and suggests strongly that the Wiltshire CWAEC was not impartial in its dealings with either Odlum or Hudson. http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/55_204Martin.pdf
I have looked at some of the CWAEC minutes for my locality through a local archive, since Kew do not have copies. Some comments about local farmers are blunt and the composition of the committees gives very clear insight into the local social order. The feudal system is still going, despite the 1925/26 law of property legislation. My local manorial court was still dealing with copyhold ( as opposed to freehold ) land in 1946. Other files at Kew in the MAF series deal with the selection of airfield sites. It is fascinating to see the arguments that arose over land usage priorities, The town and country planning system as we know it was in its infancy. Compulsory Purchase powers enacted because of the National Emergency were still being used to acquire land for military purposes until the late 1950's. Some files that should have been in the MAF series have been destroyed.
A Local District Officer with the CWAEC was tasked with documenting 1,202 Agricultural Holdings which stretched over 32 Civil Parishes. Each Farm was walked and different types of Land ,Buildings, Roads and Soil were recorded on a plan and the Farmer was Discreetly Graded A,B or C. Note was also taken of Livestock, Machinery and Staff. In short a Modern Domesday Book
I noticed this was touched on in a episode of Foyles War where pasture land was reclaimed for growing potatoes. Cultivation in just this one paddock was said to return 40 tons annually. This also praised the efforts of the women's land army.
There was also the Land Purchase Annunity scheme in BOTH world wars. Farmers were offered VERY low interest fixed interest loans that allowed them to buy scrub and otherwise unfarmable marginal land from landowners and bring it into cultivation. I think the loans also covered the cost of drainage etc. The scheme was still running up until the mid 1990s in Northern Ireland at least; I used to have to envelope the demands for six monthly interest twice a year. Once a very big scheme, by then the LPA "office" had shrunk back to just two people LOL as loans eventually ran out. The loan would also transfer with the farm, not the person - it was strange to see modern farm companies, major well-known business concerns etc. being billed for WW2-era loans when they didn't even exist then A LOT of the land was ultimately untenable; here in N.I. you can see a lot of the reclaimed marginal land at last turning marginal again...as farmers made a last profit from it 6-7 decades later; rather than put more and more effort into keeping it farmable....guess just WHAT land they chose to "set aside" out of cultivation for the EU's set-aside schemes???
