Wartime farming and state control in Scotland and Northern Ireland

[T]he more I see of agriculture in these islands, the more I realize that each district has to work out its own salvation. The overall government strategy for agriculture, of setting policies nationally to be implemented by those who understood local conditions, was nowhere better exemplified than in relation to Northern Ireland and Scotland. In the former, however, there were no strict equivalents to the CWAECs, with the Ministry in Northern Ireland being the decisive authority. In Scotland there was also a greater degree of centralisation, with the Agricultural Executive Committees (AECs) functioning in similar ways to their counterparts in England and Wales, although lacking some of their powers. This chapter illustrates the overall organisation of the war effort in Scotland and Northern Ireland, its difficulties and its successes. Scotland As we have seen, in any account of wartime farming, the varied social and environmental conditions must be remembered. The different climates, economies and cultures of Highland and Lowland Scotland would form one broad brush differentiation. And on top of this was an east–west trend: in central Scotland the east had much arable farming while pastoral farming predominated in the west, with cattle as the chief stock. To north and south of this central belt, sheepwalks predominated. But in general, although much farming in Scotland was of a very high quality, the environmental conditions limited the choice of cropping far more than in England. High rainfall, severe winds and snowfalls and more limited shelter all combined to influence agricultural progress. Remoteness was also a factor, most obviously affecting the Western Isles, Shetland, Hebrides and Orkney. Culturally too, the western crofting counties bore little relationship to the commercial farms of the eastern lowlands and central belt. The Shetlands, as much dependent on fishing as farming, and looking as much to Norway as to the British mainland, would always be problematic to any Edinburgh-based directive, let alone anything from London. The interwar years had been difficult for Scottish farming. Renewed emigration in the 1920s was severe, particularly from the more marginal crofts of the Highlands and Lewis, losing substantial numbers to Canada. Abandoned crofts, where ‘the pulse of life beat[s] but feebly’, littered the west coast. As alternative jobs elsewhere diminished in number during the 1930s, emigration slowed but unemployment remained high.

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