The Real Agricultural Revolution: The Transformation of English Farming, 1939–1985

Abstract

To publish a book titled The Real Agricultural Revolution at a time when scientists and policy makers are declaring the world to be on the cusp of a fourth agricultural revolution, might appear deliberately provocative. After all, historians are still debating the nature and existence of the first three agricultural revolutions and interrogating commentators’ motivations for declaring any event to be “revolutionary.” However, the authors of this volume are not interested in such debates and developments. Rather, their prime objective is to describe and explain the “real” and “unprecedented” increase in agricultural output that characterized the period 1939–85 in England.The authors openly acknowledge that they are not the first to grapple with this issue. Agricultural economists, scientists, and historians have already produced top-down accounts highlighting the effects of a supportive policy environment that channeled funds into scientific research, capital grants, agricultural education and extension services. Analyzing the situation more from below, historians of science and technology have examined the development of particular technologies and farming systems and how they shaped and were shaped by scientific agendas, farming practices, and human-animal relationships. Awarding primacy to technological change as the driver of output increases, The Real Agricultural Revolution attempts to bridge these perspectives.The authors develop their approach through the use of formerly unexamined historical source materials: the field books produced by Investigation Officers of the Farm Management Survey (FMS), a voluntary initiative that began in 1936 and continues to this day. Surviving fortuitously in a basement at the University of Exeter, the field books contain extensive statistical data relating to farms in South West England that were selected as typical for their size or type. The authors analyze this data in conjunction with farming publications, government papers, and gray literature to reveal farmers’ changing fortunes, enterprises, capital investments, and uses of labor and machinery. Excerpts from twenty-five oral history interviews conducted with survey participants are used to provide personal perspectives on these changes and to highlight the heterogeneity that is typically obscured by statistical records. Chapters are organized thematically to address particular aspects of the change process over the period 1939–85: the organization of agricultural science, the dissemination of its findings, the policy environment, changes in land and capital, the use of labor and machinery, and specialization and expansion. Dairy farming receives dedicated attention on account of its relevance to the region and importance to the nation as a whole. The decline of pigs and poultry as sideline activities is also examined.As a work of analysis, the volume falls short of realizing the authors’ aspirations to produce a history that is “a sociological one as much as it is an economic one” (12). The reality it purports to describe is defined in economic terms as increased agricultural output. The social reality of farmers’ lived experiences is far less apparent and rests on a very restricted source base of memories elicited by closed questioning about technological changes that the authors had already identified as important in raising output. Descriptions of technological innovation are also rooted in traditional economic approaches that privilege the act of adopting a new technology over how it was actually used. Historians of technology have demonstrated repeatedly that users often embraced different socio-technical imaginaries to those held by scientific, technical, and policy experts. Users could interpret, adapt, and maintain the same technology in quite different ways, and could sometimes deploy new innovations alongside older methods in ways that experts had not envisaged. It was the use of technology that determined changes in agricultural output, not the simple act of its adoption. Yet such uses, and what they reveal about the nonlinear nature of technological change and farmers’ agency to shape it, are not considered. Consequently the authors do not realize their ambitions to transcend traditional, top-down historical perspectives on postwar agricultural change.As a work of synthesis, however, The Real Agricultural Revolution is extremely successful. Its detailed description of the productionist heyday of British farming represents the most significant historiographical contribution since John Martin's The Development of Modern British Agriculture: British Farming since 1931 (2000). While its focus on South West England means that certain enterprises are omitted—notably arable farming, beef, and sheep production—the thematic organization of material, the authors’ accessible writing style, and their light-touch references to relevant theoretical approaches make chapters eminently useful. Individually and collectively, they offer an excellent entry point for students and interested members of the public, and a solid jumping-off point for future academic inquiry.