John Martin (De Montfort University, Leicester, UK)

Ernst Langthaler (Institute of Rural History, St. Pölten, Austria)

Paths to Productivism: Agricultural Regulation in the

Second World War and its Post-War Legacy in Great Britain

and German-Annexed Austria

I. Introduction

The transition from low input low output farming to an agrosystem characterised by high

levels of upstream and downstream flows of resources on both national and international

scales has been a marked feature of the development of European agriculture since the Second

World War (Federico 2005: 196 ff.; Lains/Pinilla 2009). For this emerging agrosystem we

have applied the term productivism. According to the literature (Ilbery/Bowler 1998; Le

Heron 1993; Atkins/Bowler 2001; Friedmann/McMichael 1989), productivism can be

identified by a number of features: the substitution of capital, above all biological and

mechanical technology, for land and labour; the growth of land and labour productivity and

production; the close linkage of food production to factor and product markets (agribusiness);

the ‘optimisation’ of farm organisation according to economic efficiency goals, leading to

intensification, specialisation and concentration; the application of expert knowledge via

agricultural education and extension; the internalisation of a ‘productivist’ ethic by the

farming population; the shift from use to exchange value production as the primary basis of

the reproduction of the farming community; and – last but not least – the regulation of all

these agrosystemic features by the state which has directed, cajoled and encouraged the

development of an ‘intensive food regime’. Agricultural productivism has also enabled the

release of scarce resources such as labour from the agrarian sector. This release was

particularly significant during the 1950s and 1960s when the rapid expansion of the industrial

and service sectors led to full employment and labour scarcity for many European countries

including Britain and Austria. Therefore, agricultural productivism played a key role in the

development of Western European societies in the second half of the twentieth century.

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While the overall aims of achieving a productivist agriculture were very similar in the

cases of Britain and German annexed Austria, there were significant differences in the

regulatory framework which was established during and immediately after the Second World

War to achieve this objective. These differences were in part explicable in terms of the

historical approach to state involvement in agriculture. Prior to the Second World War the

overwhelming characteristic of the British state’s attitude to agriculture was that of free trade.

Following the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, Britain had embarked on a free trade system

whereby imports of food were allowed to enter the country without protective tariffs. The

food production campaign in the First World War was regarded as a temporary aberration

from normal. It was not until 1931, at the nadir of the Great Depression, that the British

government finally abandoned its commitment to free trade. This though was primarily a

pragmatic response to the fact that by this time, Britain had become the world’s largest free

trade area for agricultural produce. This situation, if left unchecked, would have ensured the

indiscriminate dumping of surplus agricultural commodities on the already glutted home

market. Government attempts to regulate food imports in the 1930s were patchy and of

limited success. By the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain was considerably more

dependent on imported food than it had been at the outbreak of military hostilities in 1914.

This was an invidious position given the threat to food supplies which had been posed by the

previous military confrontation (Milward 1977: 244-8; Martin 2007: 229).

Austria took a different route to state regulation of agriculture prior to the Second

World War. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Austria became embedded in the

interregional division of labour which emerged in the Habsburg Monarchy. Compared to the

Hungarian part of the monarchy where intensive arable farming and cattle breeding was

boosted by the expanding food markets of the urban centres of Budapest and Vienna, in the

Austrian part rather extensive and self-sufficient forms of agriculture prevailed. In the light of

the agricultural crisis of the 1870s, the state promoted a ‘conservative modernisation’

involving protective tariffs against imported food and the spread of agricultural associations

and cooperatives driven by an anti-liberal and anti-socialist agrarian ideology. While state

intervention in agriculture in the First World War was episodic, from 1931 onwards the

Austrian state strongly responded to the Great Depression by market intervention. These

regulations aimed at reducing agricultural ‘over-production’ – which were in fact a

consequence of the ‘under-consumption’ of the industrial population hit by mass

unemployment – in order to stabilise food prices. After the annexation to the German Reich in

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1938, Austrian agriculture was involved in the state-led production campaign aiming at

intensifying the relatively extensive mode of farming (Bruckmüller 1979).

This paper aims at challenging the conventional wisdom concerning agricultural

policy in the Second World War. The British food production campaign of the Second World

War has traditionally been hailed as an ‘unqualified success story’. Despite the country’s pre-

war dependence on imported food, the efforts of the farming community ensured that the

population was neither starved into submission, nor forced to endure the food shortages and

malnutrition that helped to undermine the morale of many other combatants engulfed in the

world’s greatest ever military conflict (Milward 1977: 246). In Austria the historical narrative

was the other way round: According to the official image of Austria as ‘Hitler’s first victim’,

the German ‘battle for production’ (Erzeugungsschlacht) was evaluated a complete failure

given the fact that outputs of most agricultural commodities steadily decreased during the war.

Thus the massive growth of agricultural productivity and production from the 1950s onwards

appeared to be solely the success of the ‘reconstruction’ (Wiederaufbau) after 1945

(Langthaler 2008: 687 ff.). As this paper shows the wartime transformation of agriculture

guided by the state was not quite as successful in the British case and not quite as

unsuccessful in the Austrian case as the prevailing wisdom has indicated.

II. Wartime regulation of farm inputs

1. Land

a) Britain

In theory, prior to the war, Britain had a free market in land in that it could be sold freehold

without any restrictions on who could purchase it. Indeed what had distinguished Britain from

most other European countries was the unprecedented sale of estates which had occurred

during the First World War and the 1920s. According to F. M. L. Thompson (1980: 332),

nearly one quarter of the land of England and Wales was sold between 1914 and 1927. It is

evident that the vast majority of the land was acquired by farmers who had previously

occupied the land as tenants, nevertheless the landlord tenant relationship remained an

important feature of the countryside and facilitated agrarian change in a number of important

ways.

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Although the outbreak of the Second World War did not lead directly to extensive

state control of the land market, intervention did take place; for instance the state

requisitioned land for military purposes such as the construction of airfields and army camps.

Indirectly there were restrictions on uses, with the state directing a food production campaign

which required farmers and landlords to use the land for the war effort. Under the 1939

Defence of the Realm Act, the Ministry of Agriculture was empowered ‘to preserve and

maintain agricultural land solely for the production of food’, to ‘control by order the

cultivation, management and use of the land in order to secure maximum production from the

farms’ and to ‘terminate any tenancy of agricultural land where it is considered the land is

being neglected or badly cultivated’ (Cantwell 1992: 29 f.). On 1 September 1939 the

Minister of Agriculture, Sir Reginald Dorman Smith, delegated these powers to the county

based War Agricultural Executive Committees (WAECs). The apex of this decentralised

system of control was the Executive Committee which consisted of between 8 and 12

members in addition to a full time paid executive officer for each county in England and

Wales. Their task was to translate Whitehall’s plans into policies which could be implemented

at the parish level by sub-committees consisting of local farmers. Such a system of direction

was deemed essential because of what the Ministry of Agriculture perceived as the ‘innate

conservatism of the British farmer’ (Murray 1954: 237).

The overwhelming need to maximise food production during the Second World War

led to the state directing farmers to increase their area of arable land via a wartime ploughing

up campaign, and to increase production of essential crops such as wheat and potatoes. In the

1930s more than 50 per cent of the land was still devoted to some form of game preservation,

with estate records revealing that several million pheasants and partridges were released each

year to complement indigenous stocks. With the exception of a small number of game farmers

who were granted licences, the artificial rearing of game birds was formally prohibited,

leading to an estimated 90 per reduction in the number of game birds reared. This new ethos

of agricultural productivism forced a radical rethink of the state’s approach to game shooting,

which was now regarded as a threat to the success of the wartime food production campaign

(TNA MAF 97/7 RFS 375).

b) Austria

Already before the outbreak of the war, in German occupied Austria the Nazi regime had

appropriated a bundle of property rights over agricultural land. According to the ideology of

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‘blood and soil’ (Blut und Boden), the 1933 Reich Hereditary Farm Law (Reichserbhofgesetz,

REG) declared medium sized farmland (c. 7.5 to 125 hectares) not to be sold, partitioned or

mortgaged. A Hereditary Farm (Erbhof) had to be passed down along the bloodline via –

primarily male – single heirs. The holder, the ‘peasant’ (Bauer), was obliged to behave

‘honourably’ and to manage the farm properly. The transfer of the farmland not concerned by

the REG, managed by ‘farmers’ (Landwirte), was put under state control by the 1937 Land

Transfer Declaration (Grundstückverkehrsbekanntmachung, GVB) (Farquharson 1976: 107 ff.;

Grundmann 1979; Corni 1990). According to the REG and GVB, all transactions concerning

land ownership and land use were controlled by public courts which handled them rather

flexibly (Münkel 1996: 193 ff.). In addition to this, Jewish owners of large estates were

expropriated in the course of a state-directed proceeding, the so-called ‘aryanisation’

(Arisierung), from 1938 onwards for the benefit of the state and ‘Aryan’ settlers (Eminger

2005; Langthaler 2009). At the outbreak of war the relatively free exchange of land had been

replaced by the state-controlled land market as well as the redistribution of land according to

racist criteria by the state. By means of this regulatory framework the Nazi regime aimed at

restructuring the distribution of farmland linked to the ideal of the medium peasant farm (Mai

2002).

During the war the inherent contradiction of state control over land became obvious.

On the one hand, state control was reinforced due to the state-led production campaign: Lease

contracts were safeguarded against termination; farm holders who were not able to manage

their farms ‘intensively’ enough were put under supervision or even dispossessed; finally, all

land transfers were postponed until the end of war (Corni/Gies 1997: 469 ff.). On the other

hand inefficient regulations were complemented by more flexible ones: The jurisdiction

concerning the REG regularly made exceptions to the ban on partitions, sales and mortgages

according to economic criteria; the consolidation of fragmented farmland was decentralised in

favour of local arrangements; the farm holder’s female offspring were upgraded in the REG’s

order of succession (Langthaler 2009). In sum, the ideological impetus of Nazi land policy

lost weight in favour of economic efficiency goals (Corni/Gies 1997: 416 ff.). Due to inherent

contradictions, the large-scale plan for the redistribution of land in the Reich in combination

with the German colonisation of the conquered areas in East Europe – which would have

caused some more millions of victims among the native population – largely failed (Mai 2002:

289 ff.).

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2. Labour

a) Britain

In the case of labour, one of the main factors differentiating Britain from other countries in the

Second World War was in terms of the direction of labour. Virtually from the onset of the war

the British state embarked on an extensive and systematic programme of mobilising labour for

the war effort in order to place the economy and society on a total war footing. One of the

iconic images of the British war effort was provided by the Women’s Land Army (WLA),

whose posters depicted the vitally important role they were playing in the battle for the

harvest. Other important sources of additional agricultural labour were school children,

prisoners of war (POWs) and soldiers. Conventional accounts have tended to gloss over the

way the existing labour force was affected by these changes.

Unlike most other countries the pre-war labour force consisted not only of farmers but

also agricultural workers. While on many of the smaller holdings the distinction between the

two groups was blurred by the fact that farmers also carried out a considerable amount of

manual work, the wartime experiences of the two groups was significantly different. In the

case of the agricultural workforce, prior to the war their numbers had been declining as the

ongoing agricultural depression undermined employment opportunities, and there was a drift

to better paid work. The outbreak of the Second World War exacerbated this trend with the

movement of workers into much better paid construction work and enlistment into the Armed

Forces. In order to address this issue the state increased agricultural wage rates, although

levels remained well below those achieved in other forms of war work. In order to protect the

labour force from military conscription, agriculture along with a number of other industries

was exempt from military service. Initially this applied to workers aged 25 years and older but

was later reduced to 21 years and older. A proposal to reduce this to 21 years was, however,

rejected by the government. Instead arrangement were made to postpone the calling up of

individual workers who were either deemed essential for the food production campaign or

where a suitable replacement could not be found (Martin 1992: 47). Restrictions were also

imposed on those employed in agriculture from voluntarily moving to other types of better

paid work. Such a system enhanced the power of the WAECs by allowing them to participate

in the decision making process about the wartime direction of labour.

While these same restrictions applied to farmers, their position was significantly

different from their workforce. During the pre-war agricultural depression, many farmers

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including their relatives had been forced to seek supplementary forms of employment which

were often allied to agriculture. Once there was an upturn in the fortunes of agriculture, as

with the outbreak of military hostilities in 1939, there was an inevitable drift of such

individuals into farming. Being a reserved occupation this exempted them from conscription

into the Armed Services. However individuals with multiple occupations or specialist pig and

poultry producers could be forced to sign up (Martin 1992: 198).

The best documented wartime increase in labour supply is that of the WLA. Britain’s

pioneering role in mobilising women for the war effort, in particular for agriculture, was

without doubt a remarkable achievement. However, it is tempting to exaggerate the

significance of this development. By 1944, the WLA had recruited more than 80,000 girls, but

the numbers involved were only a small proportion of the total agricultural workforce. More

importantly recruitment then ceased as it became clear to wartime planners that women could

be more productively employed in other less glamorous sectors of the economy such as

munitions production. Consequently new sources of labour such as POWs, soldiers and

school children were recruited. With the exception of women employed by the WLA, these

other sources had a much lower opportunity cost, in that if they were not used in agriculture

there was little else they could be used effectively for. This was particularly true for POWs,

where working on the land provided one of the few sources of suitable employment. The

extent of POWs’ mobilisation was limited initially by the inability of the British government

to provide secure, localised and adequate accommodation (Hansard Parliamentary Debate

Papers, House of Commons, vol. 376, 17 December 1941, col. 932). However, once these

difficulties had been overcome, the numbers of POWs employed in agriculture rapidly began

to dwarf the size of the WLA.

While measuring the productivity of the enhanced agricultural labour force in the war

is problematic, it is possible to make a number of points about the overall policy.

Contemporary accounts which have shaped the conventional wisdom about the ploughing up

campaign have stressed the wartime battle for the harvest and how this was secured by

mobilising new sources of labour. Since the 1990s a raft of articles has appeared, eulogising

the achievements of one or other sources of labour. While not trying to decry the contribution

of any particular group in raising food production under what were often very difficult

personal circumstances, it is important to recognise that there was a significant redirection of

available labour in favour of agriculture, and that the cost effectiveness of utilising this

particular resource has not been subject to econometric analysis. A prima facie case exists for

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suggesting that agriculture in general did not suffer the extent of labour shortages recorded in

contemporary accounts (The Farmer and Stockbreeder 1947: 1549; Martin 1992: 153-160).

b) Austria

After Austria’s annexation by the German Reich in 1938, the administration of labour

assignment faced two huge problems: firstly, the massive exodus of rural labourers from

agriculture to the booming construction and armaments industry; secondly, the recruitment of

parts of the male workforce to the German army (though initially farm holders were exempted

from conscription). As a reaction to the first problem, prohibitions of occupational changes

between agriculture and other sectors were introduced in 1938/39; however, rural labourers

often ignored these official restrictions in the search for better working and living conditions.

As an initial reaction to the second problem, German citizens, especially women and youths

from urban areas, were obliged to work in agriculture – but with limited effects. After the

outbreak of war in 1939 a political compromise between ideological concerns and economic

interests in the massive assignment of foreign labourers in German agriculture was negotiated

(Langthaler 2005: 139 ff.). Accordingly, POWs and civil workers from German occupied

Europe were more or less forced to work on the farms; for instance, in the province of

Niederdonau the numbers of POWs engaged in agriculture peaked at 30.000 in 1942 (3.9

percent of agricultural labourers in 1939), the number of foreign civil workers reached the

maximum of 70.000 in 1944 (10.3 percent of agricultural labourers in 1939). Their

assignment was regulated by a discriminating law according to national and ‘racial’ criteria.

The regulatory framework of ‘labour assignment’ (Arbeitseinsatz) was related to the regional

and local conditions in different ways. The inherent contradiction between the foreigner’s

inclusion as part of the farm labour force and their exclusion from family life led to various

arrangements between the system’s imperatives and the life-world’s priorities, which were

experienced within the spectrum between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ treatment. Whereas this

contradiction did not lead to overt conflict in respect of working-crews and camps on large

farms and estates, it manifested itself on small and medium sized peasant farms. For instance,

the tradition of a communal meal for the workforce which was an integral part of the family

economy was prohibited between Germans and foreigners. It was up to intermediary agencies

to negotiate everyday compromises between antagonistic forces. In practice, the primacy of

pragmatism over ideology shaped the assignment of foreign labourers until the end of war

(Hornung et al. 2004: 107 ff.).

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3. Capital

a) Britain

Prior to the outbreak of the Second World War British farmers had suffered from a shortage

of capital as a result of low prices for agricultural commodities. For many farmers economic

survival was an objective which took priority over plans to invest in more productive method,

or infrastructure improvements such as building or drainage schemes. Farmers had been

forced to survive by undertaking a series of cost-cutting exercises designed to minimise

purchases of all kinds. Expenditure on inputs such as fertilisers and infrastructure

improvements were reduced to a bare minimum. There was little sense in making attempts to

raise agricultural output if the additional produce had to be sold at less than the cost of

production. In government circles this lack of investment was often interpreted as

symptomatic not only of capital shortages but also entrepreneurial failure on the part of

farmers.

In order to stimulate production during the war the Government, in conjunction with

the Ministry of Food and the Ministry of Agriculture, implemented high guaranteed prices for

most agricultural commodities at the farm gate. In effect this wartime system was the

forerunner of a guaranteed price system which was later enshrined in the 1947 Agriculture

Act. This wartime system, implemented as a pragmatic response, became the basis of the

post-war system of agricultural support. A number of grants and subsidies were introduced

including the payment of a £2 per acre ploughing up grant for converting pasture to tillage in

order to restructure agricultural output.

The Ministry of Agriculture implemented an ambitious plan to reduce livestock

numbers and, in particular, poultry which, in comparison with cattle and sheep, consumed

considerably more cereals in relation to the amount of food for human consumption they

produced. In 1939 Britain was much more dependent on imported feeding stuffs than any

other European country. Therefore the anticipated reduction in imports resulting from the

outbreak of military hostilities could literally have starved Britain into submission.

The outbreak of the Second World War led to unprecedented controls over the

allocation of imported feeding stuffs, which declined from 22 million tons in 1938 to 11

million tons by 1944. Under the jurisdiction of the WAECs, a complex rationing system was

introduced whereby animal feeding stuffs were allocated according to the type of livestock,

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previous stock levels on holdings and their productivity. While dairy production was given

priority in the allocation process, milk producers were still affected by the enforced ploughing

up of grassland and reductions in the supply of purchased feeding stuffs. The aim of wartime

controls was to encourage dairy farmers to maintain production as far as possible by the

increased use of home produced feeding stuffs.

Cattle and sheep production, which were regarded as not so essential for the war effort,

contracted under the new restrictions. Likewise pig and poultry production, which were

heavily dependent on concentrated feeding stuffs, declined by about 60 per cent during the

war, and a number of intensive livestock producers were forced to give up production and

conscripted into the Armed Forces (Martin 1992: 198).

Machinery was another vital input for the agricultural sector. Prior to the Second

World War there were about 60,000 tractors on British farms. Horses remained the main form

of motive power on the land accounting for about two thirds of the total power used. By 1945

there had been a three-fold increase in the number of tractors, and similar increases in other

machinery. The replacement of horses by more productive tractors helped to ensure that

arable cultivations could be completed more quickly and economically, and that crops could

be planted and harvested at the most opportune time.

The increased use of tractors had a significant effect on the amount of food available

for human consumption by reducing the amount of food and fodder required to maintain the

working horse population. However the production of agricultural machinery was regulated

during the war, with munitions and armaments production taking priority. Machinery imports,

most of which originated from the United States, were also restricted. The allocation of new

machinery to farmers was controlled by the WAECs . The increasing demand for second hand

machinery led to unprecedented price rises for such items (Martin 1992: 132).

The war led to huge increases in fertiliser use. In the case of potash, for example, the

quantity used increased from 75,000 tons in 1938-9 to 115,000 tons by 1944-5, whilst

phosphate increased from170, 000 tons to 346,000 tons over the same period. The increase in

the use of nitrogen, which was the most cost effective fertiliser input, rose from 60,000 tons to

172,000 tons. In spite of the unprecedented increases in the supply of artificial fertilisers, it

was necessary for the WAECs to prioritise their allocation to arable crops such as wheat and

potatoes, which were most important for the wartime food production campaign.

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b) Austria

Nazi ideology was obsessed with the fear of a ‘soulless technocracy’ (Herf 1984); however,

the agrarian apparatus promoted technical progress suited to the demands of peasant farming.

The application of land-saving technology (e.g. mineral fertilizer) was driven by the political

aim of raising German self-sufficiency in food and feeding stuffs. Additionally, the out-

migration of agricultural labourers to industry and, since the outbreak of war, the recruitment

of parts of the male rural population to the army were driving forces for applying labour-

saving technology (e.g. mowing machines). Due to the fall in prices of mineral fertilizer and

machinery after Austria’s annexation to Germany as well as state subsidies for investments in

farm infrastructure, a ‘technological boom’ until the beginning of the ‘total war’ in 1942/43

can be observed. However, there was a strong bias towards larger farms in favoured areas;

smaller farms in less favoured areas were hardly able to acquire additional money for

technical investments on the credit market due to high levels of indebtedness caused by the

crisis of the 1930s (Langthaler 2000: 357 ff., 2009).

In order to solve this structural problem, the Nazi administration launched a large-

scale action for ‘debt relief and construction’ (Entschuldung und Aufbau) converting short-

term into long-term debts as well as providing credits and subsidies for technical investment.

As a result, farms participating in this action became financially subordinated to the state as a

‘super-creditor’ (Langthaler 2000 357 ff., 2009). However, the attempts to make a ‘great leap’

in the application of modern technology in German agriculture failed due to warfare priorities;

the technological vision of the ‘armament of the village’ (Aufrüstung des Dorfes) was

postponed to the time after the ‘final victory’ (Endsieg) (Corni/Gies 1997: 407). In order to

prepare for the ‘great leap’ by ‘small steps’, pilot projects for the improvement of the

technical infrastructure in a few mountainous areas were implemented with great enthusiasm,

but limited effects (Siegl 2005; Langthaler 2009). Though an effective ‘technological

revolution’ of Austrian agriculture did not take place before the 1950s, one should not

underestimate the ‘technological boom’ in the Nazi era. Compared to Britain where

technological investment was stimulated by indirect state intervention via high prices for

agricultural produce, in German-annexed Austria it was rather the direct state intervention

which promoted the adoption of technological innovations.

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4. Knowledge

a) Britain

Prior to the war, according to the conventional wisdom, one of the main factors inhibiting the

adoption of more productive methods of production was the farmer’s attitude. Farmers were

constrained by geographical and occupational immobility, usually originated from a farming

family and shared ‘its limited perspectives and its distrust of education, and had tended to

ignore the startling advances in agricultural science which were taking place’ (Calder 1971:

483). Farmers often pursued extensive, low input low output systems of mixed farming,

dominated increasingly by milk production. This was the mainstay of their activities as it

provided a monthly income from the newly established Milk Marketing Board; however,

throughout the 1930s the average herd size was little more the twenty cows (Martin 1992: 216

ff.). As Calder (1971: 483) had noted, farmers adversely affected by the ongoing depression

had developed ‘persecution mania’. As such, economic survival rather than innovation was

their overriding ambition.

Greater production through the adoption of new, more scientific methods was

encouraged by the state prior to the Second World War via the research activities of the

Institute of Agricultural Economies at Oxford University and by agricultural advisors

employed by County Councils. The overall effects of these institutions were quite limited in

terms of raising agricultural output. Instead the main drivers of change were pioneering

farmers who sought to exploit changing market opportunities. Faced with the low prices for

British agricultural produce which prevailed in the 1930s their main focus was on reducing

production costs to enable them to compete (Bridges/Jones 1933: 11).

The decentralised system of wartime control was designed to provide an effective and

low-cost way of modernising the agricultural sector, ensuring that progressive methods of

high input farming were widely adopted. This transformation according to Murray was ‘the

greatest triumph ... the success of the local organisation’ exhibiting ‘a crusading enthusiasm to

bring about a renaissance in British farming’, and noting that the key figures in this process

were the ‘progressive tenant farmers and farming landowners on the committees’ (Murray

1954: 340). In a similar way, Edith Whetham eulogised the ‘missionary zeal’ of the WAECs

in disseminating more productive methods (Whetham 1952: 130). When evaluating these

claims, however, it must be borne in mind that the WAECs consisted primarily of farmers

with the technical and administrative skills necessary to work on a committee, and who had

13

sufficiently large farms and labour force to enable them to be away from their holdings. More

recent research has cast serious doubts on how effective the WAECs actually were (Short

2007). In particular the wartime fate of a number of farmers reveals the seedier and vindictive

approaches pursued by the WAECs (Martin 2000: 242 -250; Short 2007; Rawding 2007).

b) Austria

In 1935 the multitude of agricultural research units in Germany were unified under the

umbrella of an all-encompassing organisation, the Research Service (Forschungsdienst),

under the direction of Konrad Meyer. Agricultural sciences were redirected from basic to

applied research according to the expansionist 1936 Four Years Plan (Vierjahresplan) (Heim

2003: 15 ff.). After Austria’s annexation, a few research units for the development of Austrian

agriculture – which was officially regarded as a ‘laggard’ – were founded. Driven by the

imagination of the ‘productivist countryside’, plans for the intensification of the variety of

regional farming systems were developed. Thereby, the regional differentiation between

arable farming on the plains and dairy farming in the mountains was reinforced. Agricultural

extension via mass media and the dense network of regional agencies (Wirtschaftsberatungs-

stellen) was expected to transfer experts’ knowledge into farmers’ minds. Via face-to-face

extension by local ‘farm advisers’ (Hofberater) the gap between expert knowledge and

everyday experience should be bridged. Several forms of communication in the press can be

identified: instruction, discussion, education and appeals. However, the limits of state-led

knowledge transfer soon became obvious. An instrument for the extension staff was provided

by the ‘farm record’ (Hofkarte) which annually registered a multitude of farm-level data. Like

the panopticon (Foucault 1994: 251 ff.), it allowed the agricultural apparatus to monitor all

farms without being noticed by their holders; moreover, it allowed farm holders to ‘observe’

themselves in that it provided a means for reflecting alternative farming strategies. Thus, the

farm record enabled state control of the national farm as well as farmers’ self-control,

therefore complementing the state power by the ‘microphysics of power’. In the course of the

war, collective and individual agricultural extension was more and more confined to measures

which promised short-term effects (Langthaler 2009).

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III. Wartime regulation of farm outputs

1. Productivity and production

a) Britain

The most obvious yardstick used to measure the success, or otherwise, of the food production

campaign is the amount of food made available for human consumption. Despite Britain’s

pre-war dependence on imported food and the enforced contraction in levels of imports, the

British people were not starved into submission. Anecdotal evidence implies that there was, in

fact, for some a significant increase in their dietary standards. Nor were they subject to

disrupted food supplies which, in the latter stages of the Second World War, began to paralyse

the war effort in other countries. The wartime increases in domestic food production enabled

Britain to cope successfully with the diminution in food imports caused by the German U-

Boat campaign and allowed shipping to be switched to the importation of military resources

for the war effort (Milward 1977: 246).

Given this achievement it may appear rather pedantic or even heretical to question the

conventional wisdom about the success of the British food production campaign (Martin 2000:

46-58; Brassley 2007). Any evaluation must differentiate between the achievements of the

Ministry of Agriculture in increasing food production, and those of the newly reconvened

Ministry of Food in ensuring the more equitable distribution of available food and in

enhancing the nutritional understanding of a balanced diet including the value of vitamins.

One also needs to differentiate between the statistical analysis and contemporary or official

evidence shaped by the need to maintain civilian morale. The wartime rationing system

administered by the Ministry of Food ensured that the population had an adequate diet in

terms of calorific intake; but this was achieved at the expense of radical changes in the

composition of the diet, in particular in the amount of meat which was consumed. The

wartime success of the British food production campaign was to a significant extent a

reflection of the Ministry of Food’s improvements in the distribution of food coupled with its

propagandist appeals to persuade consumers to accept the wartime diets (Martin 1992: 96).

In terms of gross physical output, the increase in the production of specific crops was

particularly impressive. As the official history acclaims, ‘by 1944, there had been compared

with pre-war production, a 90 per cent increase in wheat, 87 per cent in potatoes, 45 per cent

in vegetables and 19 per cent in sugar beet.’ (Ministry of Information 1946: 5). But such a

15

computation is not as persuasive as it might at first appear. These remarkable increases were

primarily the result of growing larger areas of specific crops rather than indicative of

sustained increases in levels of output per acre. During the war crops yields were only

marginally greater that those prevailing fifty years earlier. In contrast to the suggestions made

by classical economists, that as more marginal land was brought into cultivation, crops would

invariably have declined, this tendency was more than offset by changes that would have

increased productivity per acre. All in all, revisionist British critiques have shown that the

wartime increases in agricultural output were considerably less impressive than contemporary

accounts indicated (Martin 2000: 47-58; Brassley 2007).

A crucial but neglected explanation for the wartime increase in arable, and even

grassland production, was the reduction in the level of the rabbit population and the amount of

damage they caused. This decline reflected not only the activities of the state in directing a

pest control campaign but also peoples’ valuation of rabbits as a food source (The Farmer and

Stockbreeder 1941: 893).

In an industry such as agriculture, characterised by a wide diversity of farming

systems and a multitude of producers with individualistic approaches, wartime directions

were not always endorsed in an harmonious way. Measuring the magnitude of wartime

opposition to state directives has historically concentrated on the small number of farmers

who were dispossessed as a result of failing to carry out directives. Analysing the number of

dispossessions suggests that they were very much the exception to the norm (Martin 2000: 60-

63; Short 2007). Making an example of a small number of farmers ensured that a much

greater number were unwilling to question the wartime directives. Coupled with the financial

incentives the wartime control of agriculture popularised a ‘new morality’ of economic

consideration amongst a large swath of the farming community. Traditional yeomen farmers

were transformed into the yesmen of Britain having little option but to implement the

committees directives.

b) Austria

One of the big challenges of Nazi agricultural policy was to increase domestic production –

especially to close the ‘protein and fat gap’ (Eiweiß- und Fettlücke) – in order to become

independent from imports of food and feeding stuffs as much as possible. Thus, from 1934

onwards production campaigns, so-called ‘battles for production’ (Erzeugungsschlachten),

were announced. At the outbreak of war, Herbert Backe, the deputy of the Minister of Food

16

and Agriculture, Richard W. Darré, had become the central coordinator of German food

production. He called for the increase of overall production in general, of root crop, fodder,

oil plant, fibre plant and vegetable production in particular. Furthermore, improving the

performance of the cattle stock, especially raising milk output, was demanded (Farquharson

1976: 161 ff.; Corni 1990; Corni/Gies 1997: 469 ff.).

The state-led production campaign involved three instruments: propagandistic appeals,

price regulations and farm control. Soon after the outbreak of the war, appeals shifted from

the demand for increasing production to the demand for stabilisation. They aimed at

implementing a ‘productivist’ production ethic in the minds of the farmers. Due to the

collective fear of hunger revolts, the Nazi administration stabilised producer prices at a

medium level in order not to overburden the consumer. While official prices for field crops

and milk were relatively stable 1938 to 1944, prices for meat showed a considerable increase.

However, prices were complemented by grants for products in great demand by the war

economy, e.g. for oil and fibre plants. Farm control encompassed a broad spectrum of

measures of surveillance and punishment: statistical registration, confiscation of all produce

beyond the household’s subsistence needs from 1939 onwards, commissions for farm

inspection as well as supervision, removal and even expropriation of failing farmers

(Langthaler 2009).

The effects of the production campaign with regard to output were rather limited in

German-annexed Austria. However, the annual total output was quite stable from 1940

onwards (Langthaler 2000: 348 ff.). In the province of Niederdonau in 1939-44 a variable

harvest can be observed: The area of arable land declined; the proportion of cereals and root

crops decreased in favour of vegetables, forage crops and oil and fibre plants; the area of

fallow land which increased until 1941 declined afterwards; a continuous, but limited

extensification of land use was registered; the annual yields per hectare varied mainly

according to climatic influences; overall production was partly stable (food grain, rye, fodder

beet etc.) and partly declined (feed grain, potatoes, sugar beet etc.); the livestock population

was quite stable during wartime; decreasing numbers of pigs were compensated by cattle; the

official numbers of slaughtered animals declined due to the expansion of the unofficial

‘shadow economy’; the annual milk yields per cow declined due to the scarcity of feeding

stuffs. While one might argue that the ‘battle for production’ was lost (Degler/Streb 2008), in

a number of instances it was possible for victories to be celebrated (Langthaler 2009).

17

2. Self-supply, marketing and income

a) Britain

Prior to the war farming incomes remained dismally low. According to the National Farm

Management Survey, those with holdings of between 200 and 250 acres were making about

£250 a year, while the average small farmer with between 50 and 100 acres was earning on

average about £150 per year. Out of these earnings the farmer had to pay his living expenses,

taxation, interest on borrowed money, and put aside interest on capital investment. There were

wide variations in profitability between one holding and another, depending not only on size

but also on the type of activities pursued and the managerial ability of the family concerned. It

is not surprising, therefore, given the economic conditions of the 1930s, that the prevailing

philosophy of the farming community was economic survival rather than maximising

production, measured in terms of either gross output per holding or output per acre. As Ashby

and Evans noted, ‘resources were largely concentrated on activities which would bring

immediate returns and the future was sacrificed to the present’ (Ashby/Evans 1944: 172).

The Ministry of Food was responsible for the distribution of food from the farm gate,

while the Ministry of Agriculture coordinated and controlled the production of food literally

up to the farm gate. However there was considerable inter-departmental rivalry between the

two organisations. In Britain food distribution was addressed by the development of an

extensive rationing system, although basic foods such as bread and potatoes were not rationed.

Most animal products were rationed in terms of the quantity which could be purchased by

individuals or families. The wide range of foods available meant that it was not possible for

the Ministry of Food to allocate a basic ration of every conceivable food. Consequently a

rationing system was introduced whereby each consumer could use their allocated points to

acquire specific items. The value of this system was that it provided a means of ensuring a

degree of choice in the selection of foods. A number of commodities such as poultry were not

rationed but subject to maximum price controls. Fixing controls in this way was intended to

discourage production of these items while at the same time preventing profiteering. The

success of these measures was very mixed (Martin, 2009, 214-5).

Consensus has suggested that farmers derived substantial financial benefits from the

wartime period of control. J. K. Bowers and P. Cheshire acknowledged that ‘by any standards

farmers had a good war’ and, in light of his calculations, net farm income at constant

purchasing power tripled during this period (Bowers/Cheshire, 1983: 61). Even allowing for

18

the fact that this relative increase was inflated by abnormally low levels of income prevailing

prior to 1938, the wartime increase was very substantial, being significantly greater than that

accruing to most groups of entrepreneurs or managers in other industries during the war.

Wartime income gains were not equally distributed across the farming community.

Identifying precisely how each group of farmers was affected is rather problematic, given that

the majority were not in the habit of compiling detailed financial accounts about their

activities, nor were they willing to subject their activities to financial scrutiny by outsiders.

An insight can be gleaned from the analysis of farm accounts undertaken by provincial

agricultural economists, in particular those at the Institute of Agricultural Economics,

University of Oxford. These studies reveal that larger farmers fared considerably better than

their smaller counterparts. This was particularly true for farmers in the southern counties who

were already geared to the large scale production of arable crops. Conversely smaller farmers

in traditional pastoral areas derived substantially fewer financial benefits (The Farmer and

Stockbreeder 1942: 456).

b) Austria

One of the dogmas of Nazi agricultural policy was to replace the ‘chaos’ of free markets by

‘market order’. It was the task of the Reich Food Estate (Reichsnährstand), the obligatory

corporation of producers, manufacturers and distributors of food, to administer the flow of

goods in the channels of the official market and to regulate prices and trade margins. At the

national level the Reich Food Estate was led by the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Richard

W. Darré. It was vertically organised at the levels of provinces (Landesbauernschaften),

districts (Kreisbauernschaften) and communes (Ortsbauernschaften); horizontally, at the

national, provincial and district levels three divisions – the first for the mobilisation of the

farming community (Der Mensch), the second for farm infrastructure (Der Hof) and the third

for marketing (Der Markt) – were installed. At the outbreak of war, the Reich Food Estate,

initially founded as a self-governing corporation, was incorporated into the state

administration as a food agency (Corni/Gies 1997: 101 ff.).

Farmers, their families and permanent labourers were not included in the rationing of

food which was implemented at the outbreak of war; they were permitted to fulfil their

subsistence needs on an official per capita consumption basis. However, all goods beyond the

household’s subsistence needs were confiscated by the state. Each farm, commune, region and

province of the German Reich was required to provide a quota of agricultural produce

19

annually. Domestic production fell short of the food requirements of the military and civil

population and foreign labourers; only through the exploitation of German occupied areas in

East Europe could the provision of German consumers – and, hence, the loyalty of the masses

– be ensured until 1944 (Langthaler 2000: 348 ff.).

Offences against the ‘market order’ were sanctioned by fines, imprisonment and, in

serious cases, capital punishment. However, a substantial number of farm holders participated

in the ‘shadow economy’. Special Courts (Sondergerichte) were established in order to cope

with the masses of defendants. The judges differentiated between several delicts: Farm

holders who misappropriated food, e.g. by slaughtering a pig, in order to supply their family

members and labourers were imprisoned from several months up to two years. Farm holders

who sold products on the ‘black market’ at excessive prices got between one and six years of

close confinement. Farmers were very rarely sentenced to death; capital punishment was

rather imposed on craftsmen who misappropriated large amounts of food (butchers, millers,

merchants etc.). It is striking that farmers convicted to imprisonment were frequently granted

an amnesty after a few months; in favour of the state-led food economy they were allow to

remain working on the farm rather than devoting scarce resources to imprisonment, an action

which would have also have adversely affected civilian morale (Langthaler 2009).

How the state regulation of marketing affected farmers’ income is hard to estimate.

Official calculations for the Austrian farms in 1939 indicated a substantial decline in income:

Though prices for machinery and mineral fertiliser abruptly declined after the annexation in

1938, labour costs rose considerably. Thus an official debate about the ‘undervaluation of

agricultural labour’ (Unterbewertung der Landarbeit) emerged in the press. A detailed

scrutiny of farm accounts indicates that there were significant variations in farm income

depending on region and farm size. Larger farms and farms in advantaged areas could profit

more from stable product prices than smaller farms and farms in mountainous and remote

areas (Langthaler 2009).

IV. The post-war legacy of wartime regulation

1. Britain

Wartime control heralded the establishment of a guaranteed price system for the main

agricultural commodities in which the prices received by the farmer were subsidised by the

consumer. It also resulted in a productivist regime where financial support was linked to

20

productivity. The 1947 Agriculture Act was intended to promote stability and efficiency for

the agricultural sector, insulating producers from the vagaries of volatile overseas markets,

which were characterised by depressed prices during periods of abundance and high prices

during periods of poor harvests.

The explicit aim of the legislation was to raise farm incomes in order to stimulate

further increases in agricultural output. But this strategy was not completely successful. In the

short term it often resulted in farmers spending a greater amount of their extra income on non-

productive items of conspicuous consumption such as motor cars. The Agriculture Act

directing County Councils to provide smallholdings of a minimum of 50 acres requiring a full

time worker was specifically intended ‘for the purpose of affording persons with agricultural

experience an opportunity of becoming farmers on their own account.’ This policy differed

from the previous outlook, where smallholdings were seen as an outlet for persons not wanted

in other industries. However, this part of the legislation was permissive, and only a relatively

small number of authorities actively embraced these developments. Moreover, smallholdings

provided only limited opportunities for farmers to progress up the farming ladder as, once

ensconced in a holding, they tended to remain as tenants until they retired (Martin 2000: 84).

The Agriculture Act established a favourable climate for the expansion of the

agricultural sector, a position which was to endure well after 1955. As Figure 1 shows, the

wartime increase in the area of arable land not only dwarfed the rise which had taken place in

the First World War but it the extent of arable farming was also sustained during the post-war

period. The post-war emphasis on arable farming resulted from government policies and

international conditions. World agriculture, with the exception of North America, had been

acutely disrupted by the conflict, and food shortages prevailed across Europe and Asia, a

situation which was not immediately resolved. Even in 1947-8, for example, world food

production was still 7 per cent below levels which had prevailed prior to the outbreak of the

Second World War. By 1955 world food shortages were gradually being replaced by food

surpluses, a position that was eventually to transform the government’s approach to the

agricultural sector. Agriculture had become apolitical, with the two main political parties

being committed to the carrot and stick approach (Self/Storing 1971: 193).

21

Figure 1: Agricultural land use change in England and Wales in the twentieth century

Source: Short et al. 2007: 3.

One of the downsides of the post-war system of agricultural support was that in order to

survive in the more competitive, financially orientated post-war period, farmers had little

22

option but to continue to expand their activities and to intensify production through the use of

inputs including machinery derived from outside the sector. It encouraged the use of artificial

fertilisers, herbicides and pesticides, the removal of hedgerows and ditches, the drainage and

reclamation of scrub and woodland, and the ploughing of indigenous grassland which was

considerable more valuable in terms of its biodiversity than the crops and leys that it replaced.

Change was achieved only at the expense of long term environmental and social

consequences. Industrial farming ultimately led to a depopulated and less aesthetically

pleasing countryside. The wartime concentration on maximising the production of specific

crops and livestock had significant, long term effects on the farming community. A new

morality based on economic criteria emerged, transforming the yeoman of Britain into what

were essentially the yesmen of Britain, endorsing without question the official orthodoxy

about high input farming. An important but isolated exception to this general trend was

promulgated by Eve Balfour, whose seminal work The Living Soil subsequently came to be

regarded as the classic contemporary text of the organic movement. However, the war in

general was a major setback to organic farming (Conford 2007: 67-77).

2. Austria

In the Austrian case, the post-war legacy of wartime regulation can be identified at material,

social and symbolic levels. At the material level, farms and household had become more

dependent on monetary redistribution by the state and incomes on the state-regulated markets

in general, on investments in technical equipment in particular. In the Nazi era the first step of

the long-term substitution of technical capital for land and labour was made, as is shown by

Figure 2. Whereas the social position of the peasantry had mainly depended on landed

property until the 1930s, state transfers and market incomes became more and more

determining. Technical ‘modernisation’ became a crucial question for decision-making at the

farm level in the post-war era. Farmers were therefore forced to concentrate their efforts on

maximising profits in order to generate sufficient income to keep pace with the accelerated

technical change. From the 1950s onwards this culminated in the vicious cycle of the

‘agricultural treadmill’ (Cochrane 1993) which squeezed out smallholdings and small peasant

farms unable to sustain a sufficient level of profitability (Langthaler 2009).

23

Figure 2: The substitution of technical capital for land and labour in Austrian agriculture in

the twentieth century

0

1

10

100

1000

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

index (loga

rithm

ic scale)

tractors (index 1993=100)

mineral fertiliser (index 1965/69=100)

agricultural labourers (index 1923=100)

agricultural area (index 1923=100)

Note: The dashed lines indicate the Nazi era 1938-45.

Source: Langthaler 2009.

At the social level, the agrarian apparatus had ‘colonised’ rural life-worlds by loosening

regionally and locally embedded social relations and establishing a strong axis with state

agencies and state-regulated markets, e.g. via forced commercialisation by the ‘market order’.

After seven years of state regulation the farming population became accustomed to role of the

state as the leader of the ‘national farm’; thus, the state was accepted as the central actor of the

food regime at the national level. Under these circumstances the crucial question of the

agricultural-political debate after the war was not, if the state might play this role, but how this

should be done. The post-war regulation of agriculture could directly tie in with the state-

farm-axis established in the Nazi era (Langthaler 2009). This pathway culminated in the 1958

Market Order Act (Marktordnungsgesetz) and the 1960 Agricultural Act

(Landwirtschaftsgesetz) which codified the state-led ‘national farm’ as an aggregation of

medium sized and technically upgraded family farms. This framework provided the legal

basis of Austrian agricultural development until the entry in the EU in 1995 (Kröger 2006).

At the symbolic level, the orientation of agricultural experts and also the farming

community to past experiences tended to be weakened in favour of future expectations.

Agriculture became increasingly ‘virtual’, i.e. the farming system was conceived as a ‘project’

which ought to be reconfigured according to an ‘ideal farm’ prescribed by agronomic experts

24

(van der Ploeg 2003: 3 ff.). This norm was associated with intensification, technical progress,

specialisation, commercialisation, productivity and production growth; in short, it promoted a

productivist style of farming. Via the multitude of regulations, driven by political, economic

and symbolic forces, this norm directly or indirectly affected the practice of farming. While

we shall not overestimate the transformation towards a ‘productivist ethic’ in the Nazi era,

evidence suggests that the reproduction of traditional farming styles was considerably eroded

(Stocker 1990; Langthaler 2009).

V. Conclusion

When evaluating the impact of the Second World War on the development of British and

Austrian agricultural development (Langthaler 2010) it is tempting to conclude that not only

was the transition to productivism considerably more evident in Britain than in Austria but

also that it was the direct result of the wartime system of state control of agriculture. In spite

of Britain’s abnormal pre-war dependence on imported food, the country emerged from the

war with significantly enhanced production levels of staple foods, in particularly wheat and

potatoes, and with an industry which had been more structurally transformed than that of

Austria. Though in German-annexed Austria productivity and production numbers rather

stagnated or declined for most crops, the agricultural sector experienced a considerable shift

in the application of biological and mechanical technology, therefore initiating the long-term

substitution of capital for land and labour. Furthermore, a regulatory framework directed by

the state was institutionalised, ranging from formal market orders to informal styles of

‘productive’ farming, upon which the ‘take off’ of agricultural growth in post-war Austria

could build.

In Britain, the main force for this change has been traditionally attributed to the

regulatory framework of price controls and the direction of production undertaken by the state

but coordinated at the local level by the WAECs. Certainly the wartime development of

guaranteed prices became an important feature of the post-war period and contributed

significantly to the ensuing expansion of production. However a number of important

questions remain about the local direction of agriculture. Questions have been raised about

whether they treated farmers in an objective and dispassionate way or not and about the extent

to which they were responsible for disseminating more productive methods of farming. With

the benefit of hindsight it is evident that the story of agriculture in the Second World War was

not the remarkable success story hailed by contemporaries. In the case of labour the system of

25

wartime controls focused on reversing the historical process of decasualisation by directing

new sources of labour to the agricultural sector. Some progress was made in the dissemination

of more productive methods of farming but it would be easy to exaggerate the role played by

state agencies during the war. It is important to remember that the highly acclaimed WAECs

were eventually disbanded and that one of their legacies was that elderly farmers often

equated their adverse experiences of wartime direction to the efforts made by the state to

promote modernisation in the 1950s and 1960s.

While the impact of the state-led ‘revolution’ of British agriculture should not be

overestimated, one should not underestimate the effects of wartime regulation on Austrian

agriculture. Although technical change was far from being a ‘revolution’, institutional

changes had a ‘revolutionary’ impact on post-war agricultural development. They promoted

the spatial and temporal re-ordering of agricultural regulation towards a state-centred and

progressive mode of farming. Of course, this regulatory framework was negotiated by diverse

forms of everyday resistance by the rural population during the war (Münkel 1996; Bauer

1996; Herlemann 1993). However, the institutional innovations in the Nazi era had a

considerable impact on Austrian post-war agricultural development. Though the so-called

‘total re-ordering’ of agriculture by the Nazi regime failed, evidence suggests that the years

1938 to 1945 were an era of partial modernisation. In short, the Nazi era was no ‚great

leap‘ at all, but an irreversible step – a kind of Sattelzeit (Koselleck 1979: 349 ff.) – along the

pathway to agricultural productivism in post-war Austria. The characterisation of the Nazi era

as a transitional period between the ‘conservative modernisation’ of Austrian agriculture until

the 1930s (Bruckmüller 1979) and the enforced modernisation from the 1950s onwards

challenges the conventional wisdom that the years 1938 to 1945 were a downturn or even a

backlash of agricultural development in the twentieth century.

This comparative study shows that productivism in both Britain and Austria was

primarily the result of the post-war decades rather than being induced by the war, and that the

pathway to this regime was considerably more rocky in the British case and less circuitous in

the Austrian case than rural historians have so far been willing to endorse. Though this study

has revealed a number of important issues which challenge our conventional wisdom, it also

illustrates the need to intensify research on the transition to the ‘productivist food regime’

(Friedmann/McMichael 1989) in twentieth century Europe.

26

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