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    Farming in the 1920s and 30s
    Farming in the 1920s and 30s
    Farming in the 1920s and 30s
    Ebook95 pages44 minutes

    Farming in the 1920s and 30s

    By Jonathan Brown

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    About this ebook

    With world markets upset and economies in recession, the 1920s and '30s were not an easy time for farmers, who required great resilience to survive. Jonathan Brown here examines the challenges that farmers faced and the ways in which they responded. Some turned to new crops, with new markets emerging for sugar beet, eggs, milk and pork. Some used tractors and other machines to increase productivity, and the motor car and lorry opened up new possibilities for bringing produce to market. It was hard work whichever direction was taken, but the effects of these innovations was undeniably beneficial and the farming landscape was transformed from what it had been in Victorian and Edwardian times.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateJul 20, 2012
    ISBN9781782001096
    Farming in the 1920s and 30s

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    • 5/5
      Loved it. Always enjoy reading of how farming was done in the old days

    Book preview

    Farming in the 1920s and 30s - Jonathan Brown

    Hampshire.

    INTRODUCTION

    THE DECADES between the two world wars were a time of contrasts. It was an age of economic difficulty, of industrial depression, strikes in the coal mines, unemployment and international insecurity. Yet there were many new, sometimes exciting developments: radio, dance bands and new consumer goods made in trading estates on new arterial roads along which motor cars and lorries travelled. The 1930s brought not only dole queues, but also a new age of elegance – of streamlined design, aviation and fast trains.

    There was increased leisure time for some as well, enabling many town-dwellers to visit the countryside. Enticed by railway posters, perhaps, or guide-books with their attractive covers, people came to enjoy a ramble or picnic among picturesque hills, dales and villages. The visitors perhaps saw an idyllic countryside, but life in the village and on the farm was as full of contrasts as everywhere else. Hopes of the dawning of a new age after the First World War were quickly dashed, and farmers returned to their struggle with challenging economic conditions. For them, hard work continued as before – the daily round of milking, carting feed to cattle in wintry fields, and doing battle with markets unwilling to pay a good price for their produce.

    There were new things for the farmer – new markets for sugar beet, eggs, milk and pork. Many new machines were introduced, although few farmers could afford them until well into the 1930s. The motor car and lorry arrived on the farm. Some of the comforts of urban life were reaching villages and farms. The arrival of mains water made a big impact. When the mains reached Brightman’s Farm in Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, in 1935, it brought about a major change to life in the farmhouse. No longer did drinking water have to come from tanks that stored rainwater, which had to be filtered through charcoal to make it usable.

    While the countryside might have seemed unchanging, the effect of all these influences was that the nature of the inter-war farm was becoming quite different from its Victorian and Edwardian predecessors.

    According to this detail from an advertisement, Bibby’s animal feed apparently made every farmer as prosperous as this one seems to be.

    ADJUSTING TO PEACE IN THE 1920S

    AFTER THE First World War English agriculture suffered a severe shock. War always places particular demands on the farmer. It disrupts and distorts patterns of activity established in peacetime. It forces up the prices of agricultural commodities that have become scarce, especially those that have been imported. It creates a shortage of labour and increases its cost. All of these difficulties were experienced to an unprecedented extent in the First World War – what many have called the first ‘total war’.

    Pressure to feed the nation at war brought about government involvement in agriculture in ways not experienced before. The state took control of the markets, setting upper limits to prices, but also offering to maintain minimum prices for two commodities – wheat and oats. It intervened in the labour market, setting minimum wages and helping with the supply of labour through the employment of prisoners of war and the new Women’s Land Army. It told farmers what they should be producing – cereals and potatoes, which had greater immediate calorific value as human food than the meat and milk that farmers had been finding more profitable before the war. Local war agricultural committees were appointed to oversee the implementation of this policy, leading to the phrase ‘farming from Whitehall’ entering the farmer’s lexicon of abuse. Exhortation and manipulation of markets turned to direction, with the introduction of the ploughing-up campaign in 1917 to force farmers to turn more of their grassland over to cereals. The campaign’s success can be measured in the 1.4 million acres of pasture that were ploughed up between 1916 and 1918.

    After the war there was talk of creating new stability

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