When Britain went to war in 1939, increasing the amount of food being produced at home became very important. Britain had relied heavily on food coming from abroad, and the danger to shipping meant that more use had to be made of farmland at home. This brought the government much further into the everyday running of farms than I had appreciated before looking at the records.
County War Agricultural Executive Committees were established across England and Wales and usually became known simply as the County War Ags. Many of the people serving on them had farming experience themselves, and their work covered everything from finding tractors and machinery to dealing with shortages of labour. They were also involved in deciding which land ought to be cultivated. A farmer who had kept a field as pasture, for example, might be required to plough it and use it for crops.
These committees were not limited to offering advice. They had wartime powers to issue directions where land was considered to be badly cultivated. Farms could be inspected and changes required, and the powers available eventually extended to taking possession of land or ending the tenancy of a tenant farmer.
One case reached the House of Commons in June 1944. It concerned Wyndham Hartnell, an owner-occupier who farmed about 200 acres in East Sussex. The MP who brought up his case argued that Hartnell had already been through difficult years before the war and had lost cattle following sewage pollution on his land. He maintained that improvements had been made to the farm, but Hartnell had eventually been dispossessed.
The government gave a rather different account of how these cases were dealt with. The parliamentary secretary explained that representatives of the county committee would normally visit a farm first. Advice might be given, followed by directions concerning such things as machinery or fertilisers, and further approval was required before possession was taken. Hartnell’s case was disputed, but the debate shows that these powers were actually being used while the war was still being fought.
The National Farm Survey of 1941–43 collected an extraordinary amount of information about individual holdings, including land, buildings, machinery, labour and water supplies. An inspector also visited the farm and completed a Primary Farm Survey, recording the condition of the holding and giving an assessment of its management.
The grades were A for well managed, B for fairly well managed and C for badly managed.
I was particularly interested in the section dealing with the reasons behind a poorer assessment. Where a B or C grade could not be explained by old age or lack of capital, the inspector was required to give details of the farmer’s “personal failings.” It seems remarkably personal when you imagine that judgement being written down as part of an official wartime survey.
Around 14,500 holdings of five acres or more, covering about 1.21 million acres, were classified C. This did not mean that all of those farmers were removed. Advice, assistance, directions and closer supervision were among the measures available before possession was considered.
Between 1940 and 1944, possession was taken in 5,350 cases covering 344,413 acres. During the same years, 2,695 agricultural tenancies were terminated, covering 225,939 acres.
It is quite a long way from the wartime farming story I first knew, which was mostly Land Girls, tractors and Dig for Victory. Farmers were also dealing with inspections, official assessments and instructions about the way their land was being used. In a relatively small number of cases, those decisions ended with somebody else taking control of the farm.
Had you heard of the County War Ags before?
Image info:
Barley harvesting at Hills Farm, Kingston Blount, Oxfordshire, 1941. Ministry of Information Photo Division / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
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