Wheat Supplies, which assumed complete control of the purchases of wheat and the operations of the milling trade, was followed by the appointment of a Food Controller and a promise in Dec. of certain guaranteed prices for wheat, oats and potatoes. At this time Rowland Prothero (afterwards Lord Ernie) had become President of the Board of Agriculture, and he proceeded to set up a Food Production Department which would take charge of a national effort to obtain more food from the land. To this department came as chief Sir Arthur Lee (afterwards Lord Lee of Fareham).
The policy adopted aimed at obtaining an increased acreage of arable land and as large a proportion of wheat and other bread corn as possible. Success depended upon the cooperation of the farmers, upon securing additional labour and upon assisting the farmer to obtain supplies of all kinds horses, tractors, seeds and manures.
The first step was to set up War Agricultural Committees in each of the counties of England, Wales and Scotland; in Ireland the existing statutory County Council Committees on Agriculture were available for the same purpose. In England smaller executive committees were afterwards appointed, to whom were entrusted in the main the special powers which had been conferred by D.O.R.A. on the Board of Agriculture. Dis- trict committees, and even in some cases parish committees, were further appointed. The staffs required for the executive committees were made up from the county council staffs and officers of the Land Valuation Department and Inland Revenue, while district commissioners appointed by the central depart- ment for small groups of two or more counties served to bind the whole organization.
As it was already Jan. 1917 before the Food Production Department was set up, it was impossible to effect much increase in the crops of that year, and in practically all cases it was ob- tained by voluntary response to the appeal for greater production. In England and Wales a further 286,000 ac. were put under the plough; the increase in wheat was 50,000 ac., in oats 616,000 ac. and in potatoes 220,000 acres. Scotland, having suffered less loss of arable land in the generation prior to the war, had smaller opportunities for reconversion from grass into arable, but added some 50,000 ac. to the plough land. In Ireland, however, the greatest extension was possible because of the much smaller draft that had been made on its man-power. An Order in Council was made requiring all Irish occupiers of more than 10 ac. to add 10% to their area under tillage, except in cases where the arable already amounted to 50% of the total cultivable area of the farm, and this resulted in an addition of nearly 650,000 ac. to the plough land of that country.
While this was going on during the spring of 1917 the county executive committees with the help of their district committees carried out a survey from farm to farm which revealed in all too many cases into what a state of neglect the land had been allowed to fall. Notices were served calling for improved cultivation, and in the worst cases the tenancies were determined, the execu- tive committees either approving a new tenant, or taking the land under their own control. The central department framed a programme for 1918 which provided for the ploughing-up in England and Wales of 2,000,000 ac. of permanent grass as com- pared with 1916, and in Scotland of 350,000 acres. A quota was fixed for each county, based upon such considerations as the area which had been converted from arable into grass land since 1872, the existing proportion of arable in the county, the labour still upon the land, etc. Each county in its turn divided its quota among districts and eventually among the parishes and the in- dividual farms, orders to plough certain fields being served upon the occupiers. These " ploughing orders " in many cases excited violent opposition, and sustained attacks were made upon the Department on the specious plea that ignorant officials were ordering grass land, which was providing meat and milk, to be converted into plough land which would yield nothing. Time considerations alone permitted of no appeal from the order of the committees, who had perhaps acted in some cases on the principle of making every man do a share proportional to his
acreage without consideration of the character of the land. But the mistakes made, if one is to judge by the mass of the results afterwards realized upon the broken-up land, affected but a small proportion of the land ordered to be put under the plough. The opposition both of occupiers and owners to the plough policy must be set down to the grass-land tradition, which the great depression of 1880-1900 had so firmly impressed on English agriculture.
None the less the programme was adhered to, and, aided by favourable weather in the winter and spring of 1917-8, a re- markable increase in the cultivated area was achieved. The disturbed state of Ireland prevented the realization of the plans which had been formed for a still further increase of 5% in the cultivated area. The tables show what was actually obtained in each of the three countries.
England and Wales
 | A table should appear at this position in the text. See Help:Table for formatting instructions. |
1914
1916
1917
1918
Arable land Wheat Barley Oats .... Potatoes . All crops other than temporary grasses and fallow
ac. 10,998,254 1,807,498
1.504,771 1,929,626 461,621
8,276,166
ac. 11,051,101 1,912,208 1,332,076 2,084,674 427,948
8,038,905
ac. 11,246,106 1,918,485 1,459,796 2,258,909 507,987
8,391,263
ac. 12,398,640 2,556,661 1,500,809 2,780,063 633,832
9,894,695
Scotland
1914
1916 1917
1918
Arable land Wheat Barley Oats .... Potatoes All crops other than temporary grasses and fallow
ac.
3,295,487 60,521 194,109 919,580 152,318
i ,8o5;35o
ac.
3,303,741 63,083
169,739 990,589 130,119
1,815,217
ac. 3,360,562 60,931 159,135 1,041,343 147,717
1,866,575
ac.
3,453,495 79,062
152,835 1,243,823 169,497
2,094,376
Ireland
1914
1916
1917
1918
Arable land Wheat Barley Oats .... Potatoes All crops other than temporary grasses and fallow
ac.
5,027,082
36,913 172,289 1,028,758 583,069
2,327,752
ac. 5,050,234 76,438 150,063 1,071,593 586,308
2,400,328
ac. 5,046,008 124,082 177,135 1,463,737 709,263
3,037,869
ac. 5,270,615 157,326 184,712
1,579,537 701,847
3,239.495
United Kingdom
1914
1916
1917
1918
Arable land Wheat - ... Barley Oats Potatoes All crops other than temporary grasses and fallow
ac. 19,320,823
1,904,932 1,871,169 3,877,964 1,197,008
12,410,268
ac. 19,405,076 2,051,729 1,651,878 4,146,856 1,144,375
12,254,450
ac. 19,652,676 2,103,498 1,796,066
4,763,989 1,364,967
13.295,707
ac. 21,122,750 2,793,049 1,838,356 5,603,423 1,505,176
15,228,566
Speaking roughly, about 40% more grain was produced in 1918 than in 1916, and if the potato crop is also taken into ac- count the 1918 crops represent a saving in tonnage (and shipping was the limiting factor in the prosecution of the war at that time) of 2,600,000 tons. Results would have been even better had it not been for the disastrous harvest weather, which caused the total loss of something like 5 % of the grain crop, and rendered even more unfit for any other purpose than cattle-feeding. The occurrence of so continuous a succession of heavy rains was naturally regarded by the opponents of " ploughing up " as a justification of their adhesion to grass. It did indeed put an end to the plans which had been made for a further extension of the arable area in 1919. Work on most farms had fallen badly into arrears, and land had become foul and weedy, so that it seemed preferable to concentrate the available labour on the existing
