Farmers: from Food Producers to Park Keepers

The book describes life on a Suffolk farm in inter-war depression years when methods of farming and the life of farm workers had changed little since Victorian times. Framingham during the twenties and thirties is described, featuring Canon Lanchester of St Michael's Flintstone church, Mr. Bywater, Methodist minister and bird photographer and other intriguing local characters. There are chapters on bird nesting and the war on rabbits. Late in this period the author's father started the labor-devouring cultivation of sugar beet and the old flock of barnyard hens was transformed into a large (for those days) intensive poultry unit, supplying the emergent Sainsbury market. After army service and some years overseas, the author returned to work for the Ministry of Agriculture at a time when farming, which had been so neglected pre-war, was showered with technical help and subsidies. The author's work included "extension education" of farmers, based on the experience of American land grant colleges, sponsorship of farming competitions, financial support for the Small Farmers Scheme, designed (ineffectually) to save the English yeoman farm, and the huge, (successful) effort to improve grass production and use, with help this time from New Zealand. The farm horse almost disappeared, along with a host of workers; ever-larger tractors and machines took over. There were enormous subsidies for land drainage and fertilizers, for the removal of hedges and for modern farm buildings and machinery, in an effort to improve agricultural productivity during a time of world food shortage. There is a chapter on the furor over field straw burning and the campaign to make use of surplus straw, and another on organic farming. Lessons from European experience are included. The book ends as agricultural over-production reappears and support for the industry is about to collapse, as it did after World War I. The book is handsomely illustrated and many pictures are unique.